OT: Introducing myself

[severelysigune]

THE OLD CROWD – INTRO

***Name:
Eva

***Nicknames/IDs:
Sigune, Severelysigune
"Sigune" is a remnant from my Arthurian days. In case anyone is 
interested: she's a bald Grail maiden, in love with the knight 
Schîonatulander, who sadly dies in his first attempt to duel for her. 
It's a nick I adopted when I was eighteen and reading a particularly 
difficult Swiss novel, "Der rote Ritter", an adaptation of Wolfram 
von Eschenbach's "Parzivâl", and it sort of stuck.
I'm not bald.
I'm not in love with someone who died fighting in my honour.

***Age:
25

***Family:
None. Well – not of my own. I still live at home with my parents and 
younger sister.

***Home
Ghent, Belgium.

***Birthday, Place of Birth:
8 October in Ghent, Belgium

***Education/Job/Role in Life etc:
MA Germanic Languages (English and German). I am a researcher at 
Ghent University and attempting to write a PhD about Oscar Wilde and 
Masculinities.
My role in life is still an enticing (?) mystery.

***Other things we might want to know about you:
Er – apart from the fact that I'm delighted to be invited to The Old 
Crowd? I wouldn't know. Just fire away.

***First contact with Harry Potter:
Actually I don't know the exact date – it would have been somewhere 
in 2001, when a friend dragged me along to the cinema to see the 
first Potter film.  Shortly after, the same friend lent me her copy 
of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which entirely failed to 
impress me, but still I borrowed the next three books from another 
friend. I devoured them, but still wasn't impressed. In any case, 
that was the beginning of it all.
 
***Favourite Potter things (books, characters, ships, fics, objets 
d'Art, general enthusing):
My favourite book is "Order of the Phoenix", it being the first I 
bought myself and the one that finally got me hooked. I think what 
did it was the sudden (if somewhat belated) realisation that the 
series was very well thought out, that there was a "great plan" 
behind it all. I also enjoyed the fact that Harry was growing up and 
behaving like a flawed teenager. And, of course, there was the fact 
that James and Sirius turned out to be less nice and perfect than 
they had hitherto seemed.

Favourite character(s): Snape. I also have a soft spot for Dumbledore.

Ships – none, really.

Fics: mainly After the Rain's short fics – "The Witness for the 
Defense", "A Fellowship of Young Squires"; TheTreacleTart's madness –
 "Bottoms Up" – and her "Still Life"; and more – short stories, 
generally.

I also have a few fan art favourites, like Laurence Péguy's.

***Extent of Potter obsession:
Worrying. I'm afraid I'm really obsessed with Snape. It's not a 
strange thing: I am always obsessed with someone of something (the 
Celts, the ancient Egytians, Sir Gawain, Oscar Wilde, now Snape). It 
began with Snape drawings (I think he's visually interesting – I've 
never before tried to draw anyone looking so much like a cliché 
baddie :-) ), then came fan fiction, then HpfGU, then a Snape comic. 
The whole thing really does take up a lot of time; I need therapy, I 
think <g>


***Other interests/activities:
Comics, manga, drawing, literature (mainly French and English, and I 
haven't entered the 20th century yet), everything Victorian, Oscar 
Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, decadence, Hellenistic sculpture, painting 
in general, cinema, baking, fencing.

***Current/recent reading:
I have just finished reading Michel Faber's "The Crimson Petal and 
the White", and enjoyed it. I'm still trying to get through 
Huysmans' "A Rebours", and "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" is lying 
on my bedside table.
Comics include "Fables", De Schorpioen, and manga "Lone Wolf & Cub".

***Current/recent listening:
Sinead O'Connor, Turkish folk music, O'Stravaganza, Värttine; Radio 1.
 
***Current/recent viewing:
Dalziel and Pascoe; Charles II; Het bourgondisch complot.