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interview meme
Questions from
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the_grynne:1. Describe the best meal you've ever had.
My favourite meals have all been yum cha, I think, and yum cha is pretty much the same wherever you go. But I'll describe a gorgeous meal I had recently at Anise, one of the fanciest restaurants in the city:
(Gin & tonic, my drink of choice under any circumstance.)
- Gruyere souffle with just enough black pepper cracked over the top - gooey, soft, but not in the least bit bland.
- A tartlet of very buttery pastry filled with roasted red capsicum and semi-melted goat's feta, covered in rocket and lashed with reduced balsamic, which is pretty much the best thing EVER when combined with feta and capsicum: dark, syrupy and just sweet enough.
(With the tartlet I had a glass of a South Australian sangiovese, which is what one gets when there is no Chianti on the wine list because it's the same type of grape. skjasgfskugas. no words. WINE SO GOOD.)
- Chocolate espresso mousse. More gluggy than frothy, as mousse goes, and absolutely sublime.
2. Who are three fictional persons you relate to and why?
1) I am not sure if I've even seen enough episodes of SPN to make this claim, but Dean Winchester. I get the impression that most people come down with a preference for one brother or the other*, and I was extremely surprised to find that I was coming down VERY HARD on Dean's side despite the fact that I do not find Jensen Ackles attractive (which is a whole other bizarre thing on its own - I can look at him and SEE that his features are arranged in a pretty way, but I just. can't. FEEL it. though I like the way he smiles with half of his mouth. and the way he shrugs.) um this sentence was going somewhere before the parentheses. Right. I connect with Dean not because I want to shag him, or even because I objectively admire his character, but because I do identify with him. He knows that it's perfectly all right to have feelings, but he's just fine with Not Talking about them, or expressing them via bought foodstuffs and/or punching. He's undemonstrative in a way that is comfortable and far from cold. His urges can swing between reckless sacrifice and being, frankly, a knowingly selfish bastard. He feels that once you have a chance to lead an extraordinary life, you should seize it; he sees the serious/responsible side to what they're doing, but at the same time he refuses to relinquish his sense of levity and adventure. He likes shiny cars and weapons and being in control and freedom.
2) Hmm. Martha Jones. Mostly because her surface features match mine to a tee: medical student, bossy, refuses to take crap from people, talks back given half a chance, loves her family even though they're a bit nuts sometimes. And she knows when to cut her losses and never look back.
3) Painfully and immediately, the character of Charlotte Gabel from the short story 'An Experiment on the Constancy of Love'. This story - and this character - manages to perfectly and mercilessly capture one aspect of my personality (which I think is all you can hope for when identifying with fictional characters - it would be a great and unlikely shock to come across oneself in full). It's a story about trying to live and love according to one's reason rather than one's heart, and applying science because you are unwilling (and afraid) of giving any of yourself away to anyone else; about being afraid of letting emotions rule, because they have no rules.
(Runners-up: Chandler Bing (SHUSH) & in their own ways: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay AND Elizabeth Weir, which is one reason why I sometimes find watching SG:A to be kind of confusing. It's like the city is my psyche and all of these little subelements of myself are running around blowing stuff up! Um.)
3. Favourite mythological or fictional underworld.
I don't know any one mythology in intimate detail, but I do love the Greeks for the image of a great dark river. The first time I came across the idea of the Styx it resonated with me beautifully, as though I'd always thought about death as a river and was only now having it confirmed by an outside source. I like Charon and his boat, and laying coins on a person's eyes as toll for the ferryman, and Hades ruling with light-handed disinterest until the brightening seasons of the underworld when Persephone crosses over from the world of the living. Death's summer occurring when the world is in winter; death as the flipside of life. All this, I think, explains why the death-mythos of Dead Man's Chest - with the flipping of the ship, the souls in their own tiny boats, and all those shots of stars reflected in black expanses of water - hit such a strong chord with me. See also: Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead - 'Do you think death could possibly be a boat?' Yes, yes, I'm the sum of my influences, and in this particular case my influences seem to have conspired to give me death in rivers and boats. See also: my fascination with Leoben. Multiple deaths, rivers and streams. (Huh. This isn't actually a pattern that I'd managed to identify before, but now that I know what to look for...it's amazingly pervasive. I'm thinking about The Vintner's Luck as well. The great dark river.)
4. What emotional reactions (if any) do you have towards astrophysics - novas, black holes, the death of the universe? Comforted? Awed? Exhilarated? Terrified?
Door number three! I have little-to-no religious convictions, and I don't feel any sort of despair at the relative tininess of human beings in the grand scheme of things. I love vast, distant, breathtaking things. I like being given the perspective of mindbogglingly large numbers, I like to imagine the death of stars and hear about the ways in which the universe could end or begin again. I used to want to go into astronomy until I worked out that it was pretty much all maths, and then I decided to just be content with an active interest and much pilfering of scientific information for my literary metaphors.
5. What would you like to have happened in that second season of Firefly that never was?
- Right, well, I have been watching Candleburn way too much lately and I am reminded of the great potential for enigma and awesome that was contained in Mal & Inara's situation. I would have liked to see an intricate interweaving of Inara's mysterious past and Mal's professional inferiority complex and more snark and more really really gorgeous dresses and more of Inara's calm being shattered and (obviously) some form of outmaking, preferably linked to a fight.
- I would have liked to see Simon's character development continue and for him to get some more criminal masterminding plots; anything that developed him as a person in his own right, separate from his sister.
- Okay, more hilarious and complex heist plots in general.
- I would have liked MORE BADGER.
- And pretty much anything that added to the worldbuilding. Things about the Browncoats and the Academy and the in-between times from Earth That Was to the 'verse that is the series' context.
~
Okay, here's the deal: I dislike memes that are all YOU ARE NOW COMPELLED TO ASK EVERYONE YOU KNOW QUESTIONS HAHAHAHA so I am declaring this open season as far as interviews as concerned. Ask me anything you want, as many questions as you want. And I'll reply, and ask you as many questions as I want, which could be seventeen or two.
*Bonus impromptu poll! SPN-watchers: Dean or Sam? Don't think, just answer.
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I'm sure there's a much shorter and more eloquent way to put that question, but I am still not really so much awake, and for that I apologize.
I am, however, looking forward (har) to a v. long and v. boring day at work, so please, PLEASE, go ahead and ask questions. :D
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- If there's a Great Novel inside all of us, what's yours like (in general)? Is it spec-fic, or realism? Is it funny? What kind of writing style is it?
- How does it feel to be in love? Go on, reach for some really weird metaphors.
- Is pure & constant selflessness admirable?
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And I just had to comment back, because while I don't watch Dr. Who, I'm SO EXCITED that it has caused my British TV Boyfriend to show up in SO MANY ICONS. He so pretty.
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It's like the city is my psyche and all of these little subelements of myself are running around blowing stuff up! Um.
This is like a Matrix fic waiting to be written...
Dean or Sam? Don't think, just answer.
DEAN.
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Do you want questions?
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2) When I move to Sydney next year (fingers crossed!), what small, known-only-to-locals, tucked-away shops/cafes/places should I hunt down?
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Dean. I adore Sam, but there are just so many...driving on the highway while listening to exactly the kind of music Dean listens to has been a slightly-guilty pleasure of mine for years, and there are times when watching SPN when I react to something with a pop-culture reference a split second before Dean makes the same reference. I want to be him when I grow up, except without the metric ton of emotional and psychological baggage.
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* What would your escapist bookshop be called?
* List three characters you could have a functional relationship with.
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...yeah. I am the person who kills things and tramples over indecision.
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But I have seen, uh, maybe three episodes. So I don't know that I'm actually qualified to answer.
What is yum cha?
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Oh, oh, I meant to ask that, too.
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I love you, Fahye.
And everyone chooses Dean, just like everyone chooses Kowalski. (Sorry, I am bitter about this; not at you, though.) They are both us-only-better, dorky-cool, pop culture and self-doubt, and both enormous woobies. SDW and I always joke that someday we're going to write a Dean/Kowalski fic, with all the drooling fandom tropes--Kowalski's golden skin, Dean's emerald green eyes--and break LJ's comment function. Hee. Dean, too, has the added advantage of being in the protector role, of having a strong sense of responsibility underneath all of his devil-may-care attitude. Plus, Jensen is a better actor than Jared, even though I think Jared's improved enormously over the course of the series. (How far are you now?)
So whenever someone asks me to choose, I always say Sam, just because the Dean-love is so massively disproportionate in fandom. And that frustrates me because ultimately, what I love most about the show is both of them, the combination of them, the way they fit together, the things they bring out in each other. (Incest is a squick for me that I haven't gotten over, but I totally platonically ship them--they hit my partnership kink hard. I also have a big soft spot for siblings, being close to my brother as I am.) So sometimes I feel like if I read one more fic that's ostensibly about Sam and Dean, or even about Sam, that is really all about Dean Dean Dean, I'm going to cry.
However, at the end of the day, all of my fandom issues aside, I probably identify roughly equally with them both, and I love them both so much I can't really pick a favorite. I identify with Dean for his love of pop culture, and his taste in music, and the way (as you said) he finds joy in small things, driving down an open road with the radio cranked and the windows down. I identify with his self-doubt, and his fear of being left alone, the fear that the people he loves don't love him as much as he loves them. But I identify with Sam's love of books and knowledge for its own sake, and his peacemaker impulses, how he catches flies with honey rather than trying to smash them with a sledgehammer like Dean does, and how he can't restrain his emo confessions of his feelings even though he knows Dean's going to shoot him down (because Dean needs to hear those things, whether he'll acknowledge it or not), and all of his younger-sibling issues, many of which are mine as well. So I'm not in that sort of helpless "I can't help but see things from his/her POV" place with either of them that I am with Crichton (in Farscape; have you watched Farscape? I can't remember), or Kara, or Joe. (Uh. Did I just say I identified with Joe Dick? Um. I identify with certain aspects of Joe, particularly regarding his relationship with Billy.) I love both of them, I love the balance they have together, and at the end of the day, that's why I'm there.
Anyway. Sorry. Long answer to a fairly simple question. :)
And I have questions for you:
What's one of your happiest memories and why?
What's one piece of media (book, poem, play, song, movie, TV show, whatever) you wish you'd written?
What's a book I should read? :)
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I am still only four episodes in, so I think I will hold off on further analysis for a while; I've already done alarming amounts of it for the little canon I've seen.
I haven't seen Farscape, no. The sheer amount of it is kind of daunting. Worthwhile?
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*snerk* The thing is, you know, he's hot. But he's not perfect. And that's one of the things I love about him. *pets him*
Farscape is tied with Slings and Arrows as my favorite show ever. Absolutely worthwhile, and I think you would love it.
Sorry to be bitter in your journal. One of those mornings. Feel free to ask me questions if you want to.
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DAMN IT.
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1) Why Dean?
2) Five favourite episodes of television ever? (They can be from any show)
3) Best icecream you've ever had?
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This isn't a question, but ramble to me about the aesthetics of words, because I like the reassurance that I am not the only crazy one.
To answer your question: Dean. I liked both Winchesters equally until "Something Wicked" and then I realized that I know exactly how Dean feels as an older sibling. (That sounds really weird to say, since I've never driven around the US fighting supernatural evil.) But. It's tough work being my little sister's hero, and... I don't know what I'll do if/when that ever fades. Dean also pretty much has no self-worth beyond what he can do for other people, which, HELLO ONE OF MY COMPLEXES, resonates. Dean Winchester loves the ladies without being disrespectful about it, which is nice. (Though I am certain he's made his share of mistakes.) He also has pretty, pretty eyelashes and makes wonderfully goofy faces sometimes. I think Dean is gorgeous, but the attractiveness isn't as much of a factor for me because I'm not quite old enough for him, plus I look even younger.
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With the not talking about things, and the heartbreak is fine, really, until it all smashes through the walls in violence and crowbars, and expression of affection through retardation and food because anything else is painful and awkward to reach for. Yes.
And still being functional, fun, and adorkable.
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And you have managed to catch me in a difficult place with the brothers, by the way. Because I love Dean, I adore Dean, I admire and understand Dean -- especially his protectiveness and his Not Talking about things and the taste in music and so very much more, especially as I myself AM an older sibling and SO MUCH of it rings true especially with respect to responsibility etc. and so forth, but I have slowly come to realize that in terms of self-identification and closeness--
--for me, it's Sam.
And it's Sam because of the wanting to separate self from family and do something worthwhile, the doing whatever it took to get away to school and accomplishing it on scholarship, the love of learning, the ability to cross social groups and blend to a large degree and yet to be an UTTER DORK when it's about something that really matters, the interest in law and business and Latin and theater (even if the latter will never be a career), the frightening and 'wish-I-didn't-know-we-were-so-much-alike' similarities to a parent that lead to more conflict than anything else, and the utter, utter, unquestioned love for a sibling, even when that sibling might occasionally infuriate.
(And now you know more about me than I often let out, thanks to that ramble. :) Never a dull moment, eh?)
But it's the brothers TOGETHER that I really, really adore. All the dynamics, both their roles, and their relationship with all its complexity.
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Questions for you! I only have two.
1) If you could eradicate a single disease from the world today, what would it be and why?
2) Are there any particular tenets, concrete or vague, that you try to live your life by?
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I get it. Also he's pretty, which doesn't hurt (god lord, is that man attractive), but mostly it's the older-sibling obedienant-child. Questions, questions. I'll get back to you.
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If you could design a museum, what would you put in it?
Which author/poet/screenwriter would you want to write your life story?
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Sigh.
The other Sam things (Stanford, social blendismo, etc.) would I imagine be nails in the coffin. Actually I would probably hate everything about him that reminded me of things that are true about me.
Complex!
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Sadly I have no Dean-y figure. Or maybe it's for the best; otherwise I'm sure I would just be super-dependent. Dependenter.
SPN does have some pretty sweet icons.
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