I'm not sure whether there's even any interest, because the painting itself got less comments than usual for my fanart posts, so I guess there will be ever fewer interested in the unfinished inbetween stages. But I already made the photographs after all, so I decided to go ahead with the art process post.

( very image heavy )

Because some people find the production process interesting, I decided to do a sort of "making of" post. If you'd just like to see the finished fanart, go here.

( very image heavy )

I'm at home rather than at a party, mostly because I'm not much of a party person but it also has the advantage that I can soothe my rats through their first New Year's Eve explosions experience. So far they seem thoroughly unconcerned with all the loud noises and flashes outside, but then they usually are pretty good about distinguishing sounds outside that don't bother them and ones coming from the inside, that may pose a threat. Actually I'm wincing far more often than they at some of the sudden really loud fireworks.

So I thought I'd occupy myself with listing the stuff I drew this past year. Overall I have posted even less art in 2007 than in 2006, especially full fledged artwork. However I managed to draw a bunch of drawbles and such on request, and also did some drawing exercises, though the latter not as regularly as I intended to. I guess my New Year's resolution will be to restart posting exercise suggestions to slothsdraw, and to actually do them regularly myself this time around, rather than just one or two in a haphazard fashion.

Anyway, here's a chronological list of all things I've drawn this year:

( list of all fanart, drawbles, icon creature doodles, and exercises I drew and posted this year )

So in conclusion, if I extend "drawing" to include all doodles, icon sketches and drawing exercises, no matter how quick or lame, I have drawn and posted something almost every month. If I only count "proper" artwork, my output was far less, but at least I tried a couple of new things, especially digitally, and I made an attempt to practice more regularly, even if my slackerdom caught up with me again quickly.

With all the posts about yuletide and some fans pimping the newly created yuletart (a fanart holiday exchange for all fandoms except HP), I've been thinking about signing up for the latter, but then I read the rules for the sign-up, which ask you for offering to draw in at least ten fandoms, if I understand the sign-up correctly.

The form is a bit oddly phrased, it asks for "At least 5 fandoms you would like to get art of:", "At least 5 fandoms you want to get art of the most:" and then "Any other fandoms you would be willing to give art of:", which is unfortunate, since first, it assumes that I'm able to offer in all fandoms which I'd like to receive, which has to be bad for matching too, because I'd be more than happy to get art in a dozen fairly popular live-action fandoms which I don't draw in, and second I have to come up with ten fandoms I can draw in, which is a high number. I mean, I think yuletide only asks for a minimum offer of three fandoms for people to write in, even if most people seem to offer more. At least that high number makes sense for better chances to match people, with the fandom choice being wide open like this, so I can understand it.

But I don't think I can reasonably offer that many. While I do have many fandoms, I don't draw in live-action fandoms, so those are all out. That leaves only my comic and book fandoms, and okay, the main universes of Marvel and DC comics I can do, and to fill this out a bit more I could maybe count Sandman as separate fandom, then there's Dresden Files, and maybe LOTR, though I never tried drawing that before. And I've drawn Muppets already at least once so I guess I could do that, though I'm not that familiar with all of the canon or the movies and such, but still that's only six. I don't do a manga-influenced style so that leaves out Avatar, too. Maybe Watership Down? I mean, I've never actually read the book, just watched the movie, though I've always wanted to, but I think I could read it and manage rabbits. Perhaps Temeraire, otoh I suspect I'd suck at drawing the dragons, and worse, period costumes and stuff would probably need a lot of research. I have no clue about that stuff and never even watched any of these Age of Sail movies, so offering that would probably lead to disappointing disasters as result.

Sigh.

I suspect I should really clean my desk more often. In a half-hearted attempt to clear some space I unearthed a notepad that apparently functioned as some kind of all purpose notes thing ca. 1994. When I started to read I found a weird mix of a dream diary, some fragments of comics theory, lists of library signatures, some lecture notes on Maria Medici(?) from something I can't even remember listening to, a draft for a comic, some to-do itinerary notes (I think) from a comic con, some notes on what must have been a panel at said con, but I can't figure out what it was about (something about deconstructionism and historical imagery and noir archetypes? wtf?), some notes for a high school thing on Nazi university and science politics, I think... It's kind of hard to make sense of because the random notes are all mixed, so you have sudden switches from dream diary to lecture notes to comic ideas... like a strange written time capsule.

...which of course conveniently procrastinates any actual drawing practice. *g*

Anyway, after my last post I thought a bit more about getting back into the habit of drawing regularly, and I don't think just looking for a random list of prompts somewhere is going to work for me. When talking about this in the comments of my previous post I realized that I'm kind of looking for the online equivalent of an informal drawing group.

( cut for length, to spare the uninterested f-list )

So I thought I could do a poll to gauge the interest in such a community (btw, if I were to create such a comm it would be most likely on IJ because of 6A/LJ's recent polices wrt artwork, that make me uncomfortable with the idea of creating a drawing community on LJ).

Poll #1049048
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Would you be interested in a community to practice drawing together?

( cut for another, more lengthy poll about the possible community options, for those potentially interested in participating )

After seeing all the IBARW icons around, I've been trying to come up with an idea for an anti-racism icon that would fit with my icon theme, but so far I've kind of failed. Looking at my existing icons I'm even conspicuously lacking in icons of my avatar dressing up as COC. I have only a Teyla!RatCreature, and I haven't yet done the Ronon one I planned to complete my SGA team set (+ Wraith!RatCreature). Maybe I could be generous and count my Che!RatCreature too...

I never really thought about this until today, but in my icon set COCs (okay so there's no plural warranted yet, but I mean in principle) are also white through the design, which is that my creature avatar for fandom icons generally dresses up as different characters rather than icons showing images of the actual media characters themselves. "Blackface" disguises wouldn't be an appropriate design, so the idea to give my Teyla!RatCreature a different skin color didn't seem right to me. Though I actually didn't reflect about it much when I drew her. So it's just clothes, and I guess potentially hair, but most other "ethnic" features are kind of out with my avatar not being really human.

Actually looking closer I have to revise that statement, I do change my avatar's eyes making them narrower and slanted to varying degrees to make it look "evil", which is of course a fairly common cartoon technique. I'm not actually sure how much of that is racist stereotyping, because of the way that "cartoon eyes" don't work like actual human eyes. I mean, it's not like Asian people's eyes are actually positioned differently in the face when you draw them, they just appear slanted because the epicanthic fold reaches lower and some Asian eyes have a single fold eyelid rather than a double-fold one, so the area that's visible of the eyeball changes a bit, but human eyes have obviously a "fixed axis" what with being in a bone socket, and what changes for expression is the eyebrows. However for *cartoon* eyes to convey expression their axis is often changed like that of the eyebrows (though more subtle) to make the overall expression more intense. So for an angry look you don't just change the eyebrows, but actually tilt the axis of the eyes (you can see that when looking at Donald Duck cartoons, his character uses the eye-axis thing to great effect, you can look at classic model sheets explaining this effect this entry in an animation blog), and of course you make them narrower, because humans narrow their eyes in anger, and for happy, laughing eyes you change the axis of the eyes in the opposite direction. But looking closely I actually do draw the corners of the eyes differently for the evil characters as well, if you look at my Voldemort!RatCreature, my Sith!RatCreature and the WraithRatCreature. Umm, well, I don't know.

However, the only times my avatar is a different color are the aliens, that is the "Roswell/Gray Alien" type icon, which I made gray for obvious reasons, and the Wraith one, which ended up gray, because I wanted its hair look really white in contrast. Anyway, apparently I have no trouble changing its color then, but all the "human representing" creature versions have the same "skin" color (or maybe fur color, to be honest in my design it's not quite clear how much fur they have). In the rare color drawing containing my avatar (like this card) that color is actually a light gray, sometimes a light blue-ish gray, because that looks better than no color, so it's not really any kind of human skin tone. (I'm just pointing this out so that you don't imagine my avatar some kind of horrible light pink or something in a color drawing when I say that it is "white", that would just be ugly on it.)

So do you have any ideas for icon anti-racist motifs that would work?

In my previous post a couple of commenters said that they find commentary on the process for art and fic interesting, and don't mind the creator expressing their "these things suck in my work" lists as part of that as long as that isn't all they talk about.

So in light of that I decided to do a kind of commentary on my recent picture of Dresden Files' Bob, which is also interesting to do for me, because I worked a bit differently here than usual. I did more of the work and also effects digitally than I usually do, resulting in some things that worked and others that didn't.

( long navel-gazing, also very image heavy )

It surprised me that I've been quite productive fanart-wise by my (admittedly sloth-like) standards in 2006. Here's the complete list:

January
Tim as Avatar from Te's Intimates series (DCU - Batverse)
Platypus!Harry and Platypus!Harry fighting Voldemort, both drawn for Nimori's Animagus Challenge (Harry Potter)

February
Illustration for the epilogue of Beth's Snape/Kingsley story In From the Cold (Harry Potter)

March
Nightwing and Arsenal Show, an illustration for sister_wolf's Nightwing/Arsenal ficlet (DCU - Outsiders)
36 drawbles from the drawble meme I did, many of which are fannish (I should probably add a content warning here, because the drawbles were using the requesters' interests as prompts, so while most are harmless and just deserve a silliness warning, there's also stuff based on interests like "gay vampire snuff porn + zombies".)

April
Watership Down/SGA fusion crack (Watership Down/SGA)

May
illustration for Petra's Squandered my resistance, drawn for Comica Obscura (DCU - Batverse)
Storm (Ororo Munroe) (Marvel - X-Men)

June
Ginny Weasley (Harry Potter)

September
Tim in a visibly armored Robin costume, based on Te's request in illustrate_me (DCU - Batverse)
several Muppets/DCU fusion pieces, i.e. Kermit the Frog (as Superman) and Miss Piggy (as Lois Lane), Fozzie Bear (as Jimmy Olson), and Gonzo (as Nightwing) (DCU/Muppets)

December
Buddy Baker advertising Tofurky (DCU - Animal Man)

That's fourteen drawings, not counting the drawbles, which isn't too bad considering I only drew three in 2005 and none at all in 2004. Not exactly prolific, but at least I don't feel utterly ridiculous making a list.

Also, I tagged most of the fanart I've looked at on LJ this year, which isn't really production, but you can conveniently search and sort the links to over 2300 pieces of fanart by character and pairing (mostly comics and HP, though there's some other fandoms too), and I thought it can't hurt to mention my indexing effort again:
http://www.simpy.com/group/161

One day I'll write this long, self-indulgent post about all the ways in which comics were and are important to me. It will be filled with anecdotes telling fun childhood moments and adventures of the teenaged Emo!RatCreature (all probably slightly embellished in my memory over time, the way anecdotes tend to be), like the one about the comic which gave me the final push to realize that I am truly an atheist, on the night before my confirmation no less. In case you're wondering, it was "Le Grand Pouvoir du Chninkel" by Grzegorz Rosinski (artist) and Jean Van Hamme, in the German translation though. (I felt actually awfully guilty for lying while saying the Credo in that ceremony, I mean, at that point I knew I didn't believe, whereas when I started with the lessons two years earlier I was merely unsure, and I still said the opposite in a religious ceremony, which kind of felt disrespectful.)

Or the one with the comic workshop for teenagers which I found through a flyer in the public library, where I met kids from really different backgrounds and ventured into areas of the city I had never been to alone before. You see, the flyer didn't make that clear to me then, but looking back I realize that this was actually intended as some social project to prevent "at risk" kids from hanging out on the streets and doing drugs, or something like that. Which was why it was first at this inner city culture center near the central station and later at some slightly run-down youth center that had band practice rooms and billiard tables, a ton of anti-drug posters, and these postings with rules that spelled out that you'd be thrown out if you brought alcohol, drugs or weapons inside, and it was all very strange for me (but hey, it didn't cost anything, unlike "art courses" and things like that). Anyway, despite that the workshop was run by a social worker and an art pedagogue together, they never made it feel like a social project, which I guess is important in that line of work (because which teenager would want that?), and most likely something these people learn in their training for working with teenagers or something. Anyway, despite that slight feeling of being out of place, and the fact that I was also one of the youngest and one of only two girls, I learned a lot during the IIRC almost two years I went there, and I had far more fun there than with, say, my classmates who weren't comic fans. Besides it actually resulted in me finishing some comics, being part of an exhibition at a local comic festival (even if it was as a "youth project thing"), and a zine publication (also I never got my originals back from that exhibition *grrr*).

Other fun moments would be young RatCreature travelling alone for the first time to visit a comic con, listening to public university lectures for the first time because the culture studies department did a lecture series on comic art (I didn't understand half of the stuff these people were talking about, despite actually daring to ask questions), creating comics for the school paper, making stickers from cartoons mocking teachers, and distributing them throughout school (that really helped my popularity quite a bit I think)...

Um yes, actually this post was supposed to have another point, namely that I wanted to talk about the comics I liked well before I started reading superhero comics. There are a ton of those of course, some of which I listed some years ago in a post that was actually part of a discussion involving lists of books and stuff, but this is besides the point as well (all comics on that list are well worth reading btw, even though I don't believe in the value of trying to assemble lists of literary canon or reading lists assigning value that way in general, which is why I have disclaimed that list like mad back then too).

Anyway, I finally come to what was supposed to be the content of this post, i.e. André Franquin. I have actually no idea how famous he is outside of Europe, but considering that he was one of the most influential comic artists of the Franco-Belgian style, that he created the Marsupilami and Gaston Lagaffe I can't imagine that he isn't well known. Despite that, I actually couldn't find an English edition of his Idées Noires in a casual search, and if there truly wasn't one that would be rather sad.

I don't own an edition of the French Idées Noires, only a German translation, so I couldn't show you scans of the original, however if you read French, some of the pages are available on the official Idées Noires site I linked above. The humor in them can be rather bleak, sometimes cynical, and sometimes even depressing, despite being funny. When you read interviews or biographies the question inevitable pops up whether the Idées Noires are an outgrowth of the depression with which Franquin struggled and which caused him to be unable to work for some times during his career, in the same way that people look fo ways in which the depression might show in the Spirou and Fantasio comic QRN sur Bretzelburg (Franquin stopped working on it between 1961 and 1963), or in the ways Gaston got progressively darker.

Originally most of the Idées Noires were published from 1977 to 1982, first in Trombone Illustré (a Spirou magazine supplement) then in Fluide Glacial until his depression caused him to stop drawing. Behind the cut are scans of ten pages I like a lot, with a translation (I can't guarantee for its total faithfulness to the original, seeing how I only have a German translation of the French to go on).

( page scans from the Idées Noires )

cereta posted an entry "What I assume you know about me", listing things to give context for her LJ posts. It's a cool idea (so of course it became a meme), though I'm actually not even sure what I assume you know about me, or what would be most useful to know to provide context. Clearly I think much less about audience than others.

( not exactly succinct, I'm incapable of not rambling, you could probably count that as additional point *g* )

I was feeling grumpy and depressed, because I'm home alone with my cold (yeah, still *grumble*), and wasn't feeling up to going out, but then I decided that lying in bed, zapping through 24 hours news channels who intercut terror alert news ^(*) with New Year's celebration pictures wasn't the way to go for New Year's Eve, and I should really start New Year on a more positive note.

So I thought about what I could do to improve my mood, and I decided to take a look back on one of the most fun things for me in 2003, which was getting into Batverse fandom. It's my newest main fandom, and I'm still feeling the squee a lot.

I'm still feeling very much as a newbie too, but I've learned a lot about the universe, the characters, and DCU continuity, though I was (and still am) puzzled and confused a lot. So I present you A Newbie's Journey into Batverse Comic Fandom, and hope it conveys a bit of the fun I had this year with discovering this cool fandom.

( A Newbie's Journey into Batverse Comic Fandom )

Now that I'm in a much better mood, I wish a cheerful: Happy New Year! to all of you.

(*) There was some kind of "intelligence" on a supposed car bomb threat against a military hospital here, which led them to close off the whole parts of the hospital's neighborhood, complete with armed security forces, armored vehicles, car searches and other fun stuff (still ongoing), and now local and federal authorities are squabbling whether that is an overreaction or not, i.e. the federal authorities argue that the reaction now lowered the chance to catch the two people they suspect of planning that attack, whereas the locals argue that they had to react as precaution,...and it doesn't help that they're from different parties either.

This icon was inspired by rhiannonhero's cool "super navel-gazing" one. Actually I've seen a couple of navel-gazing icons and wanted one too. Maybe I should have gotten a lemming one, but then besides those old computer game lemmings I have no idea what a lemming actually looks like or whether I could make my cartoony avatar look like one, unless she'd jump from a cliff with a group of them or something like that...

Anyway, the reason I wanted a navel-gazing one just now, were all those "friending policy manifestos" that I've seen recently and the discussion in bethbethbeth's LJ.

The thing I've noticed is that lots of people think that the name "friends list" is unfortunate and that "reading list" or something like that would be better, and that the whole "friending"/"unfriending" process would be less loaded with additional layers of meaning beyond the reading of someone's LJ. And I actually don't think that. It's not that I think the term "friends list" is really great, but "reading list" doesn't reflect all functions either, since that ignores the whole "friends can read your locked entries" aspect of the list (that it has for many if not most people who don't bother with elaborate filter set-ups, not to mention that for those with elaborate filters the "regular reading list" might be quite different from the "friends list"), but more importantly, calling it "reading list" doesn't make the process of putting someone on that list or removing someone from it any less about "liking" or "popularity" or "personal."

I mean, in all the discussion about feedback for fanfic writing a lot of people admit that it takes some effort not to take "negative" feedback personally, and almost everybody seems happy to receive positive feedback. And adding or removing someone from a "reading list" can't avoid being that kind of feedback, at least if the authors can see who put them on their reading lists. The only way to avoid that is not to use the friends feature but a news reader and utilize the LJ RSS feeds that exist for every LJ (except in the rare cases the RSS is broken for some reason). Obviously it's also an option to go to the pages directly, but that would defeat the convenience of the "friends list." It's not like anybody had to use the LJ friends feature just to have all journals they check daily on one page. I guess a lot people who, like me, also read journals from other sites (like journalfen, blurty, deadjournal etc.) as well as blogs that have a feed use such an RSS application anyway to keep track of their reading.

I guess, I'm saying that announcing to someone that they are on your regular reading list still has the potential for all sorts of complications, and not calling it "friending" doesn't make those go away. Those "personal" complications only go away by really "lurking" and if someone wants that, there's a lot of uncomplicated technology out there that avoids all the "hassles" but keeps the "convenience" of the "LJ friends page." But on the upside the instant "low-level feedback" of telling someone that they are on the regular reading list is also a way to make the appreciation for the blogging visible, sort of like linking back to other blogs in your sidebar.

Gacked from Lucy.

1. What was the very first fandom you got involved in?

Depending on my mood I either count comic fandom in general or Duck comics by Carl Bark as my first fandom. Duck comics were definitely the first specific source where I got involved in its fandom (I joined a club, bought zines, went to conventions etc). But I had been to one general comic convention before I went to the Duck specific one, and I've been to comic workshops with other fans, and public academic lectures on comics at the university before that too.

2. What is the most recent fandom to catch your interest?

Batman comics. Seriously since late this January / early this February with the start of my interest in Nightwing, though I've read Batman graphic novels casually before.

3. Fandom you've stayed loyal to the longest?

I guess Duck comics. For tv fandoms it would be The Sentinel. I'm really not sure what "loyal" is supposed to mean, though. I've never been "monogamous" with any fandom and I don't really feel "loyalty" to fandoms either.

4. Fandom(s) you're most passionate about?

Hard to say, I think I'm usually more passionate about recent interests. But comics in general are what I'm most passionate about in the longterm view. I love the medium, I love to talk and think about how comics work and what you can do with the form, and I'll argue very passionately when someone disses comics (at least when I'm in an argumentative mood), whereas for example I won't bother to "defend" tv series against people who think following a series is a waste of time.

5. Fandom(s) you wish you could get into, but can't?

I sometimes wish I could get mangas. I mean there is this diverse artform that's really close to comics (and influences Western comics more and more), and I just really dislike them. I've tried to get into mangas when they first became noticeable here, I think in the late eighties with Akira and some other manga, and since then I've tried occasionally to see their appeal and check out whether I've changed my mind, but so far I haven't. The style is a big part of that dislike, but I think it's even more the manga way of graphic storytelling, the different visual conventions, the pacing, cuts etc. I really love the way "Western" comics are doing things, as diverse as they are, and somehow mangas just aggravate me as (slightly) "wrong."

6. Fandoms you're curious about, but never had the chance to get into?

Sports Night. I've seen many people talk highly of this show (and seen fanfic recs), but I haven't managed to get episodes beyond the pilot. And I usually don't like comedies that much, so I never bothered to find someone who might copy me tapes (and it's been not released on DVD in Region 2, so I can't just borrow DVDs to check the show out either).

7. Fandom that's been the most fun to be involved in?

The Sentinel, at least for a while. There were stretches where I was really annoyed with TS fandom in general too, but it was my first serious online fandom. I mean, I had been on a Due South list for a few weeks in autumn 1995, but that didn't work out because I didn't have a computer myself nor easy access to the internet at that time, and my brother wasn't too thrilled about the volume of an active fan list clogging his account, so it took until early 1998 before I was really sucked into online fandom. So it was in TS I had a lot of debates for the first time, and felt really passionate about them, because it wasn't the n-th rerun with variations of some topic for me then. And that was a lot fun.

8. Fandom that's been the least fun to be involved in.

Due South. I had been a casual fan a long time, but I didn't know the RayK episodes, then, I think in late 2000, I got the RayK eps though a tape trade, because I noticed that a lot of people wrote RayK fanfic that came highly recommended, but I won't read fic for something I haven't seen at all. Anyway, I really liked those eps, and thought it was time to rekindle my old DS love, and tried some RayK lists, but the atmosphere on those lists was really uncomfortable and tense somehow, though I can't really put my finger on what it was. I think my main problem was that, having missed the Ray-Wars probably lots of other stuff, I didn't know what was going on, what all those old conflicts lurking beneath were. And then some new unpleasantness started, and I was just confused and not long enough on any list to care about any of the factions, and I decided early 2001 that the best course of action would be to keep any involvement with DS fandom marginal.

9. Fandom you're ashamed to admit you were involved in?

I can't think of one, but of course if I were really ashamed to admit it, I wouldn't tell it now, would I?

10. Are you looking for a new fandom, or actively avoiding getting sucked into something new?

I'm not looking for a new fandom, but I'm not avoiding either. Well, I'm actively avoiding getting sucked into any more sprawling comic universes, despite liking the X-Men 2 movie. Unless I miraculously get lots of money I just can't afford to buy more comics right now. Actually I can't really afford the Batman comics I've been buying recently either, not if I were acting financially responsible. At least for some of the about three hundred Batman comics I now own that I didn't four months ago I used the money from my birthday present in March, and some money that I had originally intended to buy a digital camera from, so I hadn't had to resort to petty crime yet to finance my crack comics, but I don't have a long term financial plan for coping with the Batman comics, let alone even more series. So I'm fairly committed to maintaining not more than a casual interest in the X-Men comics.

tzikeh startet this meme...

I guess my first fandom was Duck comics by Carl Barks. My involvement had no clear starting point, since I'd been reading Disney comics before, and I early recognized the ones that were of better quality; also my general involvement in other parts of comic fandom grew alongside, but I've never been as much into any comic as I was into Carl Barks' Duckburgh (or collected so much related stuff for it). It started out as just reading the stories as kid comics, but my understanding, and love for them grew up together with me. I found out more about Carl Barks, collected specifically Duck comics drawn by him (in many different editions, both the German translation, which is for once really good, and the English original), got artist biographies, all kinds of indexes and other reference works listing his comics (chronologically, to find specific character appearances, to find certain themes,...), fanzines and books about Carl Barks and Duckburgh (anything from comic history to Marxist analyses of Duckburgh economy, Duck biology and Duckburgh science, to a collection of all the paintings and art that can be seen in the background, analyzed for the trends in both popular and high art in Duckburgh). I also collected newspaper and magazine articles about Carl Barks and his work, visited exhibitions (thanks to my big brother who was willing to drive me to other cities), in 1993 I became a member of the D.O.N.A.L.D., and I went to the annual D.O.N.A.L.D. gathering that year. Though that wasn't my first convention, I had been to a general comic convention, the Erlanger Comic Salon, the previous year. But for other comics I never knew so many stories and quotes by heart.

I sort of needed to dump my inking anxieties in my blog. It's the kind of entry that I would have posted on radio_kfkd were I a writer with writer issues, instead of having drawing issues...

( Read more... )

1. What does your first name mean?

The male form is supposed to have meant "Frenchman" once, so I guess something like "French woman"?

2. What does your middle name mean?

I don't have a middle name.

3. What does your last name mean?

I had to look it up, but apparently it's some variation of what's "Matthew" in English, and the name sites said that its Hebrew origin means "gift of god."

4. So what does your name mean when put together?

Gift of god from France? French gift of god?

5. What would you have been named if you were the opposite gender?

I have no idea, I have never asked my parents. I guess it would have probably also have started with F (see the question below for an explanation).

6. Any other name oddities?

My parents claimed they have named their kids alphabetically, that is bec