Sunshine Challenge: Prompt #2

[lebateleur]

What does your username mean?
"The Juggler," which is the first numbered card of the Major Arcana in a Tarot deck. This card is more commonly known in English as The Magician, and is associated with the alchemical figure of Hermes Trismegistus. Trismegistus is my preferred username but I'm LeBateleur everywhere someone else has snatched Trismegistus up first. (In fannish areas of the net, I was Trismegistus on ff.net...but got TOSed after they instituted their no NC-17 policy. Trismegistus is also one of my pseuds on AO3 and Discord).

What's your origin story? Is it fannish?
I've been writing and posting fanfic since the days of Usenet and Yahoo MLs, and back in the day I used to run a major website hosting fics featuring Alex Krycek from the X-Files. I was pretty active during Livejournal's heyday but life put most of my fannish activity on hiatus until a few years ago. I write tons of stuff but am more circumspect about posting it now than I once was. That said, I've toyed with the idea of reworking and reposting my earliest fics, which were written with plenty of enthusiasm but less attention to characterization than I might these days prefer.

What is your default icon about?
For about the past two decades, my default icon has been a picture of sweet woodruff. This is my favorite herb, for the shape of its foliage and flowers, its beautiful scent, its shady habitat, and its use in flavoring May Day wine. It has nothing to do with fandom, but ties to one of my other major interests--gardening.

Tell us anything else you want to share publicly that would help people know how to interact with you.
I love both meta and inarticulate squee, so I don't think there's a wrong way to interact with me. Anyone is welcome to read, subscribe, rec, or comment!

What does "fannish identity" mean to you?
"Fannish identity" is a useful term for the part of me that enjoys speculating about and (over)analyzing books, movies, manga, video games, or other media, getting gleefully enthusiastic about said media, and often doing the above with a group of other likeminded people, in person or online.

これで以上です。

Comments

inarticulate squee

[oldtoadwoman]

Inarticulate squee is the best. :-)

[pauraque]

Which Krycek site was yours? Whichever it was, I probably spent time reading there!

[lebateleur]

It was the Ratfic Library, which I hosted on Crosswinds (until the day it went belly up with no warning, taking the entire freaking archive with it...)

[pauraque]

That does ring a bell! Of course, they were all Rat-something, weren't they. :)

[lebateleur]

Rat-something or Basement-something, yup. :)

[under_the_silk_tree]

I don't think I have ever heard of Sweet Woodruff before but I do have a friend with the last name of Woodruff. Do you cook with it or is it just for beverages?

I didn't come to fandom life until I was older so I missed out on a lot of the old websites. It is a shame so many of them are gone now, along with the stories we wont ever get back.

[lebateleur]

I don't think it's really a cooking herb, but it does have a lovely vanilla/fresh-cut grass smell when it dries, so it's good for scent sachets too.

I know! So many of my early fics, and my favorites by other authors, are just gone now. I'm ambivalent for my stuff--it saves the embarrassment of having bad fics still around, but it also means I've lost that record of how far I've come. For the other authors, it's just a shame because I loved their stuff.

I've had some success digging things up through the Internet Archive, but abut 70 percent of the time it crawled the index pages but not the fics themselves. It's crazy, because at the time it seemed so much more permanent than paper zines or files saved to floppy disk.

[silveradept]

That's interesting to see "The Magician" marked upon as a juggler, which I would have expected to be more associated with the card known as "The Fool", the one given the 0 in English.

[lebateleur]

I think it's because the card actually was a juggler in the old Marseilles Tarot decks, and the unnumbered card was the Fool ("Le Fol" or "Le Mat"). Then, European occultists "corrected" this to the Magician when they "rediscovered" Tarot's secret origins and meanings in the 19th century. Stuff like this is one of the things I find really fascinating about the cards.

[silveradept]

That is fascinating.

(Clubs, cups, coins, knives. All things a juggler could be expected to know how to use and keep in balance. Makes sense.)

[enemytosleep]

I knew the French meaning of your username, but I wasn't aware that it was related to tarot! I'd gone more the Cirque du Soleil thought train before clicking over.

What fandoms do you call home?

[lebateleur]

I'll take Cirque du Soleil! Those guys are talented. These days, I have a weird grab-bag of fandoms: The Blake & Avery Series, D&D tabletop and video games, Destiny, anything by Sarah Monette/Katharine Addison, a lot of Japanese historical fiction/fantasy novels. I was also really big into a lot of manga/anime fandom back in the day.

How about you? I love your icon, btw. It reminds me I'm due for a Brotherhood rewatch soon.

[enemytosleep]

Ooooooooooooooo

*sidles up to the table and rests my chin in folded hands, eyes batting innocently*

Do you play D&D? Watch any streams?

My default icon is from one of the official artbooks and, ugh, I just love this series forever. I'm one of those nuts that owns/has seen/has read the entire series in all iterations, but my heart belongs to the manga. ♥ Brotherhood is a very good adaptation, though, so do finish it!

[lebateleur]

Oh yes. (In fact, one of my two regular groups just finished the campaign we'd been playing for almost the last three years the other day.) And Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu besides. I take it you play as well? And I haven't gotten into any streams yet--any you recommend?

And I know I need to finish Brotherhood, but part of me will be forever heartbroken that Okawa Toru didn't reprise his role as Roy because he is, and will forever be, my One True Voice Actor for that character.

[enemytosleep]

YAAAS. I played 3.5 in high school, then years and years went by until more recently I sought out groups in my area. I found a Pathfinder group right by me and their core group has been playing since 1981!!! They've added coworkers and their children over the years and they re a wonderful group I lucked into via Craisglist of all damn things. My coworkers (complete virgins) were so invested in hearing about our campaign that eventually I had them come over to my house for a oneshot, and now they've been playing their own Pathfinder homebrew that I've been running for them.

As for streams ... come see my squee.

Ah yes there are some shows where I've very fond of the casting and would be upset at changes. Thankfully for me I am an FMA manga fan so while I do love Brotherhood (which is a rather good adaptation) I'm not as tied to any of it as I was for the Inuyasha anime. Have a conciliatory Roy image for your loss.

[lebateleur]

Oh man, I still have my 3.5 manual to this day! That is really cool about your Pathfinder group; I've never played with a single group for so long, but hope my current groups develop into that. How do you find homebrew versus pregen campaigns? And how does GMing compare to playing?

The FMA manga is my first and deepest love in this series' universes. I unabashedly cried when I finished it (and put off reading the final chapter for years--no joke. Because once I read it, it would be Over). For me, the original FMA series was the first anime I'd watched that I felt really lived up to the source material. Others (e.g. Saiyuki) had great voice acting but shit production quality otherwise; FMA was good all around. Then they ran out of manga to adapt from and it went a bit off the rails.

And now I am off to view your squee (as soon as I finish looking at that Roy image, that is. Well played. :) )

[enemytosleep]

I've actually never played/used a pregen campaign! That said, I won a giveaway recently and they sent me Hoard of the Dragon Queen plus dice and things. I'm currently prepping/converting the first section to PF rules and plan to have that adventure run once the party reaches the capitol. I'll let you know later how it goes at the table. Based off the prep I've done so far, I wouldn't use them exclusively for games, but would consider getting more modules that fit into our homebrew.

As a DM the greatest joy I have is watching the players strategize and rolepay and have fun with what I've given them. I don't get to do "cool stuff" like my character does in the game I play, but setting up my players so they can do cool stuff is still fun.

Yeah the 2003 anime was tough because some aspects of it were so good. The extended Barry the Chopper bits were so chilling and unusually serious for animes that aired at that time. The manga is where my heart lies, though. Currently in my 400th re-read? Idk but it's been a lot over the years. xD

[lebateleur]

That's really cool--my Monday group is fully homebrew, and it's loads of fun. But even back in the day when we were doing pregen we had a tendency to go a bit off the rails. (We ended up as landlords in Phandelver, and I managed to persuade a cannon-fodder goblin into joining our party, and that's the start... And it let the DM do some "cool stuff" in addition to running the show.

And yes, I deeply, deeply love the manga. It's better than many books I've read and I've managed to convince several non-prose skeptics to try reading it. Unsurprisingly, they all loved it.

[enemytosleep]

DM cool stuff is not the same as player cool stuff, though both are much fun! It could just be that I have more experience as a player and am biased. I also am running this game for a group of 10 players (started as 6 and snowballed) so we have quite the crew already. We have a goblin bard who plays a flute, and every time he plays to inspire courage during battle I play this. xD I had this whole subplot planned with a gnome NPC that would most likely have joined the party, but as the numbers grew I was like there's no reason for them to have her around anymore so she's in a folder for later.

FMA forever ♥ My old online buddy was a PhD in essentially horror films and the talks we'd have about the plot. Good times. I miss her nerdy ass brain.

[meridian_rose]

I loved reading about the Tarot aspect of your username :)
I did not know about May Day wine, that sounds lovely!
Fingers crossed for reworking and posting some older fic.

[lebateleur]

Thank you!

Here's a good recipe for May Day wine. (I find 1/2+ a cup sweet woodruff makes it even tastier).

Over a month since the original post and I still need to get around to reposting stuff... Ah well. ^^

[meridian_rose]

Oh thank you, bookmarking that recipe :)

[lebateleur]

You're welcome! Hope you have the chance to try it next May. :)