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clo_againToday is my seventh anniversary on LJ. I feel this occasion merits at least a celebratory post revolving around the number seven. Hence, welcome to a post ALL ABOUT THE NUMBER SEVEN! (there's lots of pictures behind the cuts, sorry)
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One of my favourite facts including the number seven: Rome was built on seven hills.
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Ordinarily this would include the song Be Like Water by Sarah Fimm but I already posted that as the song for my meme in the last week. Also, it was impossible to squeeze *all* of my favourite songs into seven, so think of this as a... selection with emphasis on the nostalgia, so hopefully everyone'll find something new here:
1. Leave the Earth Behind You and Take A Walk into the Sunshine - Ballboy
'When I hold you in my arms/And pretend that I am sleeping/Well I hope you understand/Underneath the sheets with your hopes and your fears/And inadequacies/And your sheets and your hopes and your fears/Are you happy with your life?'
I got this song off a Doctor/Rose fanmix a few years back and, while it's been used as my general 'Who song and my Australia song and the alarm clock on my phone for longer than I can remember (because the guitar at the beginning wakes you softly instead of with a jump), it's still a Doctor/Rose song underneath. I'd love to vid to it but at seven minutes it'd be a bitch to do. Until then, it's a damn good alarm clock, has a beautiful guitar opening that multiplies and builds like echoes and has one of my favourite titles of any song, ever.
2. Slow Dancing in a Burning Room - John Mayer
'It's not a silly little moment/It's not the storm before the calm/This is the deep and dying breath of/This love that we've been working on/Can't seem to hold you like I want to/So I can feel you in my arms/Nobody's gonna come and save you/We pulled too many false alarms/'
This is another from-a-fanmix song (do you ever find that fanmixes have the best songs?), this time a Merlin/Arthur. It doesn't have just that connection for me though; I love thinking of this song in relation to fandoms, seeing how well it fits (and so much of the time it does; fandom!love, especially slash, is so often full of delicious angst). Not to mention the image of anyone slow-dancing together while a room burns around them is... really, really cool. In a crazy sort of way. But cool.
What I love most is that they know they're doing something stupid, they know they're heading for the end of the tracks but they're clinging to the final threads of anything they can get in quiet despair, because they don't want to be where they are. They're just helpless to stop it.
I would love to vid several different pairings to this song and see how it changes the meaning, I really would.
3. Roses - Poets of the Fall
'So when I'm crying alone/Yeah, when I'm cold as a dying stone/Grow me a garden of roses/Paint me the colors of sky and rain/Teach me to speak with their voices/Show me the way and I'll try again'
I came across this song via a Mirrormask vid made to the PotF song Carnival of Rust (also a wonderful song). I looked up other stuff by this awesome Finnish band (sadly only via Youtube; it's hard to get hold of their CDs over here as they have to be imported. I meant to look while I was in Oz and forgot, because I Am Useless) and came across this song, which is so upbeat in a really odd way; when you've hit rock bottom, remember beautiful things and learn new ways and try again. The only way to go from the bottom is up.
Poets of the Fall are a really great band by the way. Definitely worth looking up (try their awesome Carnival of Rust vid on Youtube. Ever had a nightmare about a carnival? After that, you just might.)
4. Due South - Mark Knopfler
'You could walk a hundred thousand miles and never find a home/You always knew someday you'd have to strike out on your own/You look up at the clouds and you can see which way the wind is blowing/Due South (that's the way I'm going)/Due South...'
This song just, and I mean just, beat Barenaked Ladies' Call & Answer onto this list. Partly because I love it (though I love Call and Answer just as much) but mostly because it was on my iPod while I was travelling New Zealand this year and everytime it came on it made me smile because I was travelling South, the whole way down New Zealand.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rainy_roz gave me this song years ago but it's stuck with me through two computers and two laptops. It's pretty and yes, it does make me think of Mounties and a beautiful half-wolf dog. ^_^
5. Back to Freedom - Bellylove
'I ask my self/Why did I come again/To find my own way to freedom/And the change is gonna come/I'm gonna find my way/find my way/Back to freedom'
This is a song from the first episode of series three of Buffy. The finale of series two crushed me. Seriously. I was (and still am, underneath, because I am a sap) a Buffy/Angel 'shipper and this was back in the days of watching week-by-week on BBC 2, up in my room while I was supposed to be doing my maths homework. No one else I knew watched Buffy back then (my brother did but I only found this out at the end of series three/beginning of four) and I wasn't internet-savvy enough back then to find any fansites. So I lived through months of waiting after the end of series two, only to be welcomed back with this odd little episode of Buffy in LA (hello prelude to Angel!) and this pretty, pretty song. I asked one of my brother's friends to find it to download for me and somehow he did. I kept forgetting to transfer it from the family computer to my laptop, until one random day I thought "Eh, I'll do that now' and saved a few songs from the stacks of music on there, courtesy of my brother's friends. Days later, the family computer irretrievably crashed. Thus was this song saved from the despairing pits of hard drive oblivion. It's a lucky song. :)
6. If I Wrote You - Dar Williams
'I never thought you were the letter writing type/So now I see the words you chose, the way you write/So I started to write back about the trees in the snow/And I saw a bird, couldn't say what it was/but I thought you'd know/You always surprised me.'
Okay, so Dar William's lyrics can be decidedly random at times. Parts of this song's lyrics seem to be chosen more for the fact they rhyme than the fact they make sense. But bits and pieces, like the verse quoted above, are startingly pretty. This is another fanvid song, this time from a beautifully done SG:Atlantis vid revolving around the episode where they all get to film video letters to send back to Earth for the first time. Some of the lyrics may be random, but they fit SG:A almost to the letter. And there can't be a harder letter to write than one from a different galaxy, to family you thought you'd probably never see again.
I wish I could find a link to the vid but Google's not throwing up anything. Damn. It was real pretty.
7. Born Again - We're About 9
'In my other life I lazed about day and night, in free-standing water/ during electric storms and no one suggested maybe I was going through a phase/or offered me pot or sex or rage or sympathy or pie/and I always said that if I was born again/I'd get something conductive pierced through my chest/tell the storm clouds to screw me/when all of those gigawatts passed through me'
And to end on a lighter note, sort of, have this random little song! I can't remember if I first found it through![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
audiography or a fanmix for A Farm in Iowa but regardless, it's a fantastic, bouncy, two-fingers-up-at-the-world-for-judging song. It makes me giggle every time, especially the lyric above that mentions pie. More lyrics should mention pie. Pie is awesome.
It was so hard to pick just seven songs; it's taken me over two hours. Wow.
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There were Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I would most like to have visited The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, because I really love the Greek gods.
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Click for the fullsize versions.
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The British fifty pence coin has 7 sides.
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1. Transfigurations by resonant Harry Potter, Harry/Draco NC-17
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic: I love that it has a brilliant, intelligent plot beyond the slash. I love the look at Hogwarts a few years on. I love the way American magic (in DISNEYLAND) is woven in. I love the sheer amount of thought that's gone into the spells, the names, everything. This fic is brilliant. No question.
2. (Okay, this is technically a series of fics but a series counts as one!) The FFVIII series at bishonenink, Squall/Seifer, Squall/Zell, Irvine/nearly everyone, varied ratings.
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic: This is the fic series that made me see, and love, Squall/Zell. I love the way the fics weave in and around the game story, and especially the way they write Squall but also for the Fuujin who became such a better character for me after I could place this as her backstory/future story.
3. Defensive Strategies by Milkshake Butterfly, House, House/Wilson, NC-17
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic:I think this may be the only House fic I've ever read but it makes up for it with the sheer brilliance of House & Wilson dating without realising and use of the phrase "attack breasts". Sweet, perfectly in-character (as far as I know; I'm three seasons behind) and a lot of funny.
4. Reconcilable Differences by astolat, Smallville, Kon(Superboy), Clark/Lex
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic:I read this fic on a whim (I barely knew who Kon was, not to mention how far behind I am on Smallville) but it was funny and had fantastic Clark/Lex interation while Kon and Tim (Robin) try to figure out what the hell is going on between them, with bonus!Batman playing WoW if you need to up the entertainment value. Totally worth a read even if you barely know who these people are.
5. Turkey With Fireworks byannlarimer, Hot Fuzz, Nick, Danny, PG.
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic:I have several excellent Hot Fuzz fics recced in my memories but I can't seem to find the one I wanted where the cuddly monkey is in fact an evil monkey, but is trapped in cuddly monkey helplessness and is forced to watch Nick and Danny fumble awkwardly around their relationship. Failing that, have this one which is also excellent and deliciously in-character (if they were on excessive pain meds that is, which they probably would be after the police station incident at the end). Sadly I remember this fic not for the hilarious stream-of-consciousness of Danny or the excellently timed humour, but rather for Nick sucking on a 'minty sponge' and whacking himself on the nose with the stick. It's delightful.
6. This House is Not For Sale bycentaurea_m, Doctor Who, Rose/Ten, G
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic:The 'what-if-they-had-lost-the-TARDIS-after-The Impossible Planet AU. Fun, angsty but light at the same time, believably futuristic (I love Rose getting excited over the weird stuff in the supermarket), fantastic Doctor-characterisation and a sweet, believable Rose/Ten relationship. I've got a lot of excellent Rose/Ten recs but this is the one that stands out.
7. Sleep While I Drive byseperis, Smallville, Clark/Lex NC-17
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic:I wondered if I should rec this, given that I've recced it several times already over the years but no matter how much fic I read, I always come back to this. Not because it's complex but because it isn't; it's the ultimate example of how the journey is more important than the destination. The writing is flowing and smooth and beautiful, the pace is like waking on a sunny morning and knowing you don't have to get up yet if you don't want to, and the ending is ultimately satisfying enough to justify this wandering, summer-hot exodus across Kansas and America. This fic made me love fast cars before Top Gear did. This fic made me love slash in a totally new way. I quoted a snatch of this fic in one of my university essays (though one of the G-rated parts ;) ). I really do love this fic. I've read fics that are maybe plotted tighter, than are more innovative, that have stunning characterisation or meaning... but I always come back to this. I wish I could write this well.
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In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the main quest involves awakening the seven sages of seven elements to banish evil from the land of Hyrule. Further, the number of years separating the child and adult stages of the game is seven.
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I should post this now, because I only have twenty minutes of my anniversary left and I was supposed to watch Lie to Me and In Treatment and write before I go to bed to sleep off the cold I'm getting. I did want to do more things of seven but alas, for time. Maybe tomorrow I'll do a part two. Or not, if I actually want to get anything done.
Hope it was worth it though. I certainly had fun doing it. Now to see how much of the HTML I've screwed up...wait. WAIT. I DIDN'T SCREW UP ANYTHING. DUDE. Maybe I have learned something in seven years!
One of my favourite facts including the number seven: Rome was built on seven hills.
Ordinarily this would include the song Be Like Water by Sarah Fimm but I already posted that as the song for my meme in the last week. Also, it was impossible to squeeze *all* of my favourite songs into seven, so think of this as a... selection with emphasis on the nostalgia, so hopefully everyone'll find something new here:
1. Leave the Earth Behind You and Take A Walk into the Sunshine - Ballboy
'When I hold you in my arms/And pretend that I am sleeping/Well I hope you understand/Underneath the sheets with your hopes and your fears/And inadequacies/And your sheets and your hopes and your fears/Are you happy with your life?'
I got this song off a Doctor/Rose fanmix a few years back and, while it's been used as my general 'Who song and my Australia song and the alarm clock on my phone for longer than I can remember (because the guitar at the beginning wakes you softly instead of with a jump), it's still a Doctor/Rose song underneath. I'd love to vid to it but at seven minutes it'd be a bitch to do. Until then, it's a damn good alarm clock, has a beautiful guitar opening that multiplies and builds like echoes and has one of my favourite titles of any song, ever.
2. Slow Dancing in a Burning Room - John Mayer
'It's not a silly little moment/It's not the storm before the calm/This is the deep and dying breath of/This love that we've been working on/Can't seem to hold you like I want to/So I can feel you in my arms/Nobody's gonna come and save you/We pulled too many false alarms/'
This is another from-a-fanmix song (do you ever find that fanmixes have the best songs?), this time a Merlin/Arthur. It doesn't have just that connection for me though; I love thinking of this song in relation to fandoms, seeing how well it fits (and so much of the time it does; fandom!love, especially slash, is so often full of delicious angst). Not to mention the image of anyone slow-dancing together while a room burns around them is... really, really cool. In a crazy sort of way. But cool.
What I love most is that they know they're doing something stupid, they know they're heading for the end of the tracks but they're clinging to the final threads of anything they can get in quiet despair, because they don't want to be where they are. They're just helpless to stop it.
I would love to vid several different pairings to this song and see how it changes the meaning, I really would.
3. Roses - Poets of the Fall
'So when I'm crying alone/Yeah, when I'm cold as a dying stone/Grow me a garden of roses/Paint me the colors of sky and rain/Teach me to speak with their voices/Show me the way and I'll try again'
I came across this song via a Mirrormask vid made to the PotF song Carnival of Rust (also a wonderful song). I looked up other stuff by this awesome Finnish band (sadly only via Youtube; it's hard to get hold of their CDs over here as they have to be imported. I meant to look while I was in Oz and forgot, because I Am Useless) and came across this song, which is so upbeat in a really odd way; when you've hit rock bottom, remember beautiful things and learn new ways and try again. The only way to go from the bottom is up.
Poets of the Fall are a really great band by the way. Definitely worth looking up (try their awesome Carnival of Rust vid on Youtube. Ever had a nightmare about a carnival? After that, you just might.)
4. Due South - Mark Knopfler
'You could walk a hundred thousand miles and never find a home/You always knew someday you'd have to strike out on your own/You look up at the clouds and you can see which way the wind is blowing/Due South (that's the way I'm going)/Due South...'
This song just, and I mean just, beat Barenaked Ladies' Call & Answer onto this list. Partly because I love it (though I love Call and Answer just as much) but mostly because it was on my iPod while I was travelling New Zealand this year and everytime it came on it made me smile because I was travelling South, the whole way down New Zealand.
rainy_roz gave me this song years ago but it's stuck with me through two computers and two laptops. It's pretty and yes, it does make me think of Mounties and a beautiful half-wolf dog. ^_^5. Back to Freedom - Bellylove
'I ask my self/Why did I come again/To find my own way to freedom/And the change is gonna come/I'm gonna find my way/find my way/Back to freedom'
This is a song from the first episode of series three of Buffy. The finale of series two crushed me. Seriously. I was (and still am, underneath, because I am a sap) a Buffy/Angel 'shipper and this was back in the days of watching week-by-week on BBC 2, up in my room while I was supposed to be doing my maths homework. No one else I knew watched Buffy back then (my brother did but I only found this out at the end of series three/beginning of four) and I wasn't internet-savvy enough back then to find any fansites. So I lived through months of waiting after the end of series two, only to be welcomed back with this odd little episode of Buffy in LA (hello prelude to Angel!) and this pretty, pretty song. I asked one of my brother's friends to find it to download for me and somehow he did. I kept forgetting to transfer it from the family computer to my laptop, until one random day I thought "Eh, I'll do that now' and saved a few songs from the stacks of music on there, courtesy of my brother's friends. Days later, the family computer irretrievably crashed. Thus was this song saved from the despairing pits of hard drive oblivion. It's a lucky song. :)
6. If I Wrote You - Dar Williams
'I never thought you were the letter writing type/So now I see the words you chose, the way you write/So I started to write back about the trees in the snow/And I saw a bird, couldn't say what it was/but I thought you'd know/You always surprised me.'
Okay, so Dar William's lyrics can be decidedly random at times. Parts of this song's lyrics seem to be chosen more for the fact they rhyme than the fact they make sense. But bits and pieces, like the verse quoted above, are startingly pretty. This is another fanvid song, this time from a beautifully done SG:Atlantis vid revolving around the episode where they all get to film video letters to send back to Earth for the first time. Some of the lyrics may be random, but they fit SG:A almost to the letter. And there can't be a harder letter to write than one from a different galaxy, to family you thought you'd probably never see again.
I wish I could find a link to the vid but Google's not throwing up anything. Damn. It was real pretty.
7. Born Again - We're About 9
'In my other life I lazed about day and night, in free-standing water/ during electric storms and no one suggested maybe I was going through a phase/or offered me pot or sex or rage or sympathy or pie/and I always said that if I was born again/I'd get something conductive pierced through my chest/tell the storm clouds to screw me/when all of those gigawatts passed through me'
And to end on a lighter note, sort of, have this random little song! I can't remember if I first found it through
audiography or a fanmix for A Farm in Iowa but regardless, it's a fantastic, bouncy, two-fingers-up-at-the-world-for-judging song. It makes me giggle every time, especially the lyric above that mentions pie. More lyrics should mention pie. Pie is awesome.It was so hard to pick just seven songs; it's taken me over two hours. Wow.
There were Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I would most like to have visited The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, because I really love the Greek gods.
Click for the fullsize versions.
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The British fifty pence coin has 7 sides.
1. Transfigurations by resonant Harry Potter, Harry/Draco NC-17
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic: I love that it has a brilliant, intelligent plot beyond the slash. I love the look at Hogwarts a few years on. I love the way American magic (in DISNEYLAND) is woven in. I love the sheer amount of thought that's gone into the spells, the names, everything. This fic is brilliant. No question.
2. (Okay, this is technically a series of fics but a series counts as one!) The FFVIII series at bishonenink, Squall/Seifer, Squall/Zell, Irvine/nearly everyone, varied ratings.
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic: This is the fic series that made me see, and love, Squall/Zell. I love the way the fics weave in and around the game story, and especially the way they write Squall but also for the Fuujin who became such a better character for me after I could place this as her backstory/future story.
3. Defensive Strategies by Milkshake Butterfly, House, House/Wilson, NC-17
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic:I think this may be the only House fic I've ever read but it makes up for it with the sheer brilliance of House & Wilson dating without realising and use of the phrase "attack breasts". Sweet, perfectly in-character (as far as I know; I'm three seasons behind) and a lot of funny.
4. Reconcilable Differences by astolat, Smallville, Kon(Superboy), Clark/Lex
- Why I'm Reccing This Fic:I read this fic on a whim (I barely knew who Kon was, not to mention how far behind I am on Smallville) but it was funny and had fantastic Clark/Lex interation while Kon and Tim (Robin) try to figure out what the hell is going on between them, with bonus!Batman playing WoW if you need to up the entertainment value. Totally worth a read even if you barely know who these people are.
5. Turkey With Fireworks by
annlarimer, Hot Fuzz, Nick, Danny, PG. - Why I'm Reccing This Fic:I have several excellent Hot Fuzz fics recced in my memories but I can't seem to find the one I wanted where the cuddly monkey is in fact an evil monkey, but is trapped in cuddly monkey helplessness and is forced to watch Nick and Danny fumble awkwardly around their relationship. Failing that, have this one which is also excellent and deliciously in-character (if they were on excessive pain meds that is, which they probably would be after the police station incident at the end). Sadly I remember this fic not for the hilarious stream-of-consciousness of Danny or the excellently timed humour, but rather for Nick sucking on a 'minty sponge' and whacking himself on the nose with the stick. It's delightful.
6. This House is Not For Sale by
centaurea_m, Doctor Who, Rose/Ten, G - Why I'm Reccing This Fic:The 'what-if-they-had-lost-the-TARDIS-after-The Impossible Planet AU. Fun, angsty but light at the same time, believably futuristic (I love Rose getting excited over the weird stuff in the supermarket), fantastic Doctor-characterisation and a sweet, believable Rose/Ten relationship. I've got a lot of excellent Rose/Ten recs but this is the one that stands out.
7. Sleep While I Drive by
seperis, Smallville, Clark/Lex NC-17- Why I'm Reccing This Fic:I wondered if I should rec this, given that I've recced it several times already over the years but no matter how much fic I read, I always come back to this. Not because it's complex but because it isn't; it's the ultimate example of how the journey is more important than the destination. The writing is flowing and smooth and beautiful, the pace is like waking on a sunny morning and knowing you don't have to get up yet if you don't want to, and the ending is ultimately satisfying enough to justify this wandering, summer-hot exodus across Kansas and America. This fic made me love fast cars before Top Gear did. This fic made me love slash in a totally new way. I quoted a snatch of this fic in one of my university essays (though one of the G-rated parts ;) ). I really do love this fic. I've read fics that are maybe plotted tighter, than are more innovative, that have stunning characterisation or meaning... but I always come back to this. I wish I could write this well.
In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the main quest involves awakening the seven sages of seven elements to banish evil from the land of Hyrule. Further, the number of years separating the child and adult stages of the game is seven.
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I should post this now, because I only have twenty minutes of my anniversary left and I was supposed to watch Lie to Me and In Treatment and write before I go to bed to sleep off the cold I'm getting. I did want to do more things of seven but alas, for time. Maybe tomorrow I'll do a part two. Or not, if I actually want to get anything done.
Hope it was worth it though. I certainly had fun doing it. Now to see how much of the HTML I've screwed up...wait. WAIT. I DIDN'T SCREW UP ANYTHING. DUDE. Maybe I have learned something in seven years!
