interview meme by skuf
Nov. 1st, 2006 02:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kraitI requested five interview questions from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skuf, so here are my answers:
1) You never update anymore - why?
Oh, my. I could write you a novel of apologia on this one! What it mainly comes down to, however, is fandom and life. Fandom, at least the bits of it I tend to frequent, seems to have really slowed down after the release of HBP -- understandably, perhaps, because HP/SS is going to be trickier after that one in a lot of ways; and also I suspect that a lot of writers have lost interest, or at least found new, more pressing interests to compete, be they another pairing or another fandom (I sure am seeing a lot of SGA on my Flist lately, and by "lately" I mean in the past six months plus). Again, I find this entirely understandable; I feel my own enthusiasm has waned a little, too, or at the least is now having to fight harder to keep a portion of my attention, because the first flush of YAY!Newcanon! is over, and with slimmer fic output this time round, it didn't take as long for that new feeling to fade and the difficulties of it all to shine through. My own writing has stalled out, mostly due to age -- the stories I had pieces of are now pretty much hopelessly outdated/AU, and the changes in canon to various characters means that my characterisation and reasoning are off now, too.
Maybe a lot of HP/SS fandom has found that the shine has worn off, with only one book to go before everything is permanent and solid -- so much of it is based on "we don't know what the future will hold, we can write anything," and with every book the range of "everything" got narrower; now there's really only face-the-challenge or AU-ignore-everything, so maybe people are feeling their creativity is getting cramped. (Which, if they're anything like me, means their creativity has even more incentive to latch on to other shiny distractions, where the plotting is easier and you don't have to choose between oodles of explanation versus going AU just to start your story off.)
The other part is all pretty much a case of real life affecting fandom; a year ago I moved and began school again, which (between job searches and classes and work and tests and changing jobs and the occasional vague attempt at a social life) ate up my time. I also went through a weird phase a couple months ago where I just didn't have any interest in the internet, period, for any reason; I think it was just another form of the highly-antiosocial phases I go through. But anyway, that brings us to right now. For the last month(ish) I've been seriously, or at least half-seriously, questioning where I am and where I'm going; what I'm going to school for doesn't, suddenly, seem quite so shiny and interesting, and my job is starting to convince me that, at the least, this area isn't what I want to do, and at most maybe the whole thing isn't so much what I want either.
On the other hand, the ideas that have occurred to me as alternatives are just about as vague, and I have no idea how to go about doing any real research, and I suspect are based as much on wild optimism that I'm even capable of it as much as they are on any actual ability. The more logical part of me is pointing out that this would be essentially throwing over one uncertainty for another equally shaky uncertainty; and have I considered that this might all be the effect of Seasonal Affective Disorder; and have I thought about what will happen if do decide to switch, i.e. I will have to talk to my parents about it.
2) What's your take on sex vs. gender?
You're born with one (or more, I suppose), society hands you the other. For the sake of your mental health, I strongly suggest avoiding as much as possible of the latter, especially if you are female.
I do distinguish between them in writing/discussion, but in speaking I use them interchangeably, because I like variety in my sentences and generally the person I'm talking to can tell from context. :D Hey, you're asking someone who once began reading a thesaurus because it was there; I like synonyms, and I like verbal variety. Having two words is always better than having one! But I stick with the politically correct differentiations when in writing.
Much more personally, this is one of those areas where I'm really strange. It's not that I want to be male; but I don't like being female either, at all. No upper body strength, hip structure more prone to problems, and then there's the gooey internal things like menstruation and breasts and fat storage. But if I were male there would be potbellies and hair everywhere and huge feet, a marginally better deal but still definitely unpleasant.
I'd like to design a neuter gender. It'd have a vaguely male body build, female body hair patterns, and probably a clitoris because I am rather attached to that bit :D and otherwise nada as regards reproductive features. No gonadal structures at all. Oh, and it would have a metabolism like a steam engine's furnace, because I'm always bloody freezing yet I have all this fat; clearly my metabolism needs a major overhaul. :D
3) What's your favorite movie?
The Last Unicorn, made in 1982 and staple of my childhood. I'm positive my mother must somehow never have watched it (somehow, because I know I watched it about once a week!), but oh! Beautiful animation, realistic-looking (well, sorta) characters, and a story that was in no way dumbed down for children, from the swearing to the bittersweet ending. There is soooo much to that movie (Peter Beagle worked on the script; it's very close to the book), so much that I still think about and theorize on and ponder to this day. It has so much to say about the nature of life ("there are no happy endings, because nothing ends"), and growing up, and magic, and self-determination. Eeee.
I read a lot of "children's literature" as a child, and I like to think that did something for me; I was the kid who disdained R.L. Stine in favour of all those Newbury Award winners with complex stories and emotions and motivations. Hopefully it left me with a lingering distaste for simplified stories and one-dimensional writing that will carry over into anything I do manage to write. :D
4) How do you usually wear your hair, and how often do you go to the hairdresser's?
Hahahaha! :D Parted down the middle, hanging straight down. You can't make it do anything else, not with a whole bottle of hairspray and a selection of styling tools to put the Spanish Inquisition to shame. It's been this way since... I don't know, but I know my age was in the single digits. :D I have very very straight hair (loses curl after an hour or so, even with spray or mousse), and I love it that way. What I don't love is the length -- I've always wanted really long hair, but mine just stops at around the end of my shoulderblades -- and the colour, which used to be sun-streaked (when I lived in the desert) but around puberty/moving away turned a sort of dark colourless brown. Like my mother's, my hair has no shine at all, so I usually dye it just to give it some sheen. Usually blonde-ish, sometimes closer to its actual colour.
At night or at work or when alone or mad at it, it gets yanked back into a ponytail; sometimes doubled or tripled up. I have more scrunchies than the law allows. That's it, though; aside from one of those 1990s ponytail flippers, I don't do styling. I don't own a blow dryer, and didn't own a curler till last year (it's still in the package). :D As for hairdressers... generally when the ends have split so badly they look frizzy, I make a trip home and get my mother to trim them off. Though I've had it dyed professionally several times in the past, and for (at least some) job interviews I've made the effort to do something with it. (Generally, this is "pull the top half up and back, curl under the ends.) I'm cheap, I just can't bring myself to pay someone that much money for cutting off an inch or two of hair from the bottom. When I'm no longer in driving distance from home, I suspect I'll just do it myself. I rarely care what people think of my appearance, so I don't particularly care if it ends up looking like it was cut with scissors by someone using two bathroom mirrors to triangulate. :D
5) Do you still enjoy the fics you loved when you first entered fandom, or do you find that some of them don't age well?
Hmmm. I think it's mostly the former. My brain must store a backup file of the time period somewhere, to call up for any re-readings, because I still love pretty much all of those first fics -- they still have that new-discovery, it's-a-brave-new-world feel to them I suspect the author had, when HP canon basically consisted of a list of characters and the playing field was wide open. :D A few tend to cause cognitive dissonance; Sushi's Civil War series, for instance, broke my brain when canon told me Snape was shorter than Sirius, and for I think about a year tall!Snape actually overrode canon!Snape in my head. :D Trivial stuff like that; I guess there's that inner awareness that it came before the current canon, and thus is not to be judged according to it, so I don't really find myself going "whoa, what was this writer on?!" so much as maybe occasionally thinking wistfully, "wow, I remember when we still thought Harry had the chance of someday having a real family, with Sirius and Albus, back when we thought the future could be that bright." Or, y'know, Snape had a chance of receiving the recognition and honour he craved, and finding some contentment within himself. A kind of nostalgia, I guess, around the awareness that the fic is something from another time. Really pleasant, overall, though with that wistful edge of "what's gone is gone."
skuf, so here are my answers:1) You never update anymore - why?
Oh, my. I could write you a novel of apologia on this one! What it mainly comes down to, however, is fandom and life. Fandom, at least the bits of it I tend to frequent, seems to have really slowed down after the release of HBP -- understandably, perhaps, because HP/SS is going to be trickier after that one in a lot of ways; and also I suspect that a lot of writers have lost interest, or at least found new, more pressing interests to compete, be they another pairing or another fandom (I sure am seeing a lot of SGA on my Flist lately, and by "lately" I mean in the past six months plus). Again, I find this entirely understandable; I feel my own enthusiasm has waned a little, too, or at the least is now having to fight harder to keep a portion of my attention, because the first flush of YAY!Newcanon! is over, and with slimmer fic output this time round, it didn't take as long for that new feeling to fade and the difficulties of it all to shine through. My own writing has stalled out, mostly due to age -- the stories I had pieces of are now pretty much hopelessly outdated/AU, and the changes in canon to various characters means that my characterisation and reasoning are off now, too.
Maybe a lot of HP/SS fandom has found that the shine has worn off, with only one book to go before everything is permanent and solid -- so much of it is based on "we don't know what the future will hold, we can write anything," and with every book the range of "everything" got narrower; now there's really only face-the-challenge or AU-ignore-everything, so maybe people are feeling their creativity is getting cramped. (Which, if they're anything like me, means their creativity has even more incentive to latch on to other shiny distractions, where the plotting is easier and you don't have to choose between oodles of explanation versus going AU just to start your story off.)
The other part is all pretty much a case of real life affecting fandom; a year ago I moved and began school again, which (between job searches and classes and work and tests and changing jobs and the occasional vague attempt at a social life) ate up my time. I also went through a weird phase a couple months ago where I just didn't have any interest in the internet, period, for any reason; I think it was just another form of the highly-antiosocial phases I go through. But anyway, that brings us to right now. For the last month(ish) I've been seriously, or at least half-seriously, questioning where I am and where I'm going; what I'm going to school for doesn't, suddenly, seem quite so shiny and interesting, and my job is starting to convince me that, at the least, this area isn't what I want to do, and at most maybe the whole thing isn't so much what I want either.
On the other hand, the ideas that have occurred to me as alternatives are just about as vague, and I have no idea how to go about doing any real research, and I suspect are based as much on wild optimism that I'm even capable of it as much as they are on any actual ability. The more logical part of me is pointing out that this would be essentially throwing over one uncertainty for another equally shaky uncertainty; and have I considered that this might all be the effect of Seasonal Affective Disorder; and have I thought about what will happen if do decide to switch, i.e. I will have to talk to my parents about it.
2) What's your take on sex vs. gender?
You're born with one (or more, I suppose), society hands you the other. For the sake of your mental health, I strongly suggest avoiding as much as possible of the latter, especially if you are female.
I do distinguish between them in writing/discussion, but in speaking I use them interchangeably, because I like variety in my sentences and generally the person I'm talking to can tell from context. :D Hey, you're asking someone who once began reading a thesaurus because it was there; I like synonyms, and I like verbal variety. Having two words is always better than having one! But I stick with the politically correct differentiations when in writing.
Much more personally, this is one of those areas where I'm really strange. It's not that I want to be male; but I don't like being female either, at all. No upper body strength, hip structure more prone to problems, and then there's the gooey internal things like menstruation and breasts and fat storage. But if I were male there would be potbellies and hair everywhere and huge feet, a marginally better deal but still definitely unpleasant.
I'd like to design a neuter gender. It'd have a vaguely male body build, female body hair patterns, and probably a clitoris because I am rather attached to that bit :D and otherwise nada as regards reproductive features. No gonadal structures at all. Oh, and it would have a metabolism like a steam engine's furnace, because I'm always bloody freezing yet I have all this fat; clearly my metabolism needs a major overhaul. :D
3) What's your favorite movie?
The Last Unicorn, made in 1982 and staple of my childhood. I'm positive my mother must somehow never have watched it (somehow, because I know I watched it about once a week!), but oh! Beautiful animation, realistic-looking (well, sorta) characters, and a story that was in no way dumbed down for children, from the swearing to the bittersweet ending. There is soooo much to that movie (Peter Beagle worked on the script; it's very close to the book), so much that I still think about and theorize on and ponder to this day. It has so much to say about the nature of life ("there are no happy endings, because nothing ends"), and growing up, and magic, and self-determination. Eeee.
I read a lot of "children's literature" as a child, and I like to think that did something for me; I was the kid who disdained R.L. Stine in favour of all those Newbury Award winners with complex stories and emotions and motivations. Hopefully it left me with a lingering distaste for simplified stories and one-dimensional writing that will carry over into anything I do manage to write. :D
4) How do you usually wear your hair, and how often do you go to the hairdresser's?
Hahahaha! :D Parted down the middle, hanging straight down. You can't make it do anything else, not with a whole bottle of hairspray and a selection of styling tools to put the Spanish Inquisition to shame. It's been this way since... I don't know, but I know my age was in the single digits. :D I have very very straight hair (loses curl after an hour or so, even with spray or mousse), and I love it that way. What I don't love is the length -- I've always wanted really long hair, but mine just stops at around the end of my shoulderblades -- and the colour, which used to be sun-streaked (when I lived in the desert) but around puberty/moving away turned a sort of dark colourless brown. Like my mother's, my hair has no shine at all, so I usually dye it just to give it some sheen. Usually blonde-ish, sometimes closer to its actual colour.
At night or at work or when alone or mad at it, it gets yanked back into a ponytail; sometimes doubled or tripled up. I have more scrunchies than the law allows. That's it, though; aside from one of those 1990s ponytail flippers, I don't do styling. I don't own a blow dryer, and didn't own a curler till last year (it's still in the package). :D As for hairdressers... generally when the ends have split so badly they look frizzy, I make a trip home and get my mother to trim them off. Though I've had it dyed professionally several times in the past, and for (at least some) job interviews I've made the effort to do something with it. (Generally, this is "pull the top half up and back, curl under the ends.) I'm cheap, I just can't bring myself to pay someone that much money for cutting off an inch or two of hair from the bottom. When I'm no longer in driving distance from home, I suspect I'll just do it myself. I rarely care what people think of my appearance, so I don't particularly care if it ends up looking like it was cut with scissors by someone using two bathroom mirrors to triangulate. :D
5) Do you still enjoy the fics you loved when you first entered fandom, or do you find that some of them don't age well?
Hmmm. I think it's mostly the former. My brain must store a backup file of the time period somewhere, to call up for any re-readings, because I still love pretty much all of those first fics -- they still have that new-discovery, it's-a-brave-new-world feel to them I suspect the author had, when HP canon basically consisted of a list of characters and the playing field was wide open. :D A few tend to cause cognitive dissonance; Sushi's Civil War series, for instance, broke my brain when canon told me Snape was shorter than Sirius, and for I think about a year tall!Snape actually overrode canon!Snape in my head. :D Trivial stuff like that; I guess there's that inner awareness that it came before the current canon, and thus is not to be judged according to it, so I don't really find myself going "whoa, what was this writer on?!" so much as maybe occasionally thinking wistfully, "wow, I remember when we still thought Harry had the chance of someday having a real family, with Sirius and Albus, back when we thought the future could be that bright." Or, y'know, Snape had a chance of receiving the recognition and honour he craved, and finding some contentment within himself. A kind of nostalgia, I guess, around the awareness that the fic is something from another time. Really pleasant, overall, though with that wistful edge of "what's gone is gone."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-11-01 11:46 am (UTC)Really? Seems to me I saw way more SGA a year or two ago - I'm not even seeing much Veronica Mars anymore. It's all Supernatural now!
But there's a definitely been a wane in HP interest - both on my part and on my f-list's :o(
I hope you figure out what you want to do - not always easy…
2. I have issues with the sex/gender distinction. I object to the term sex, because sex is sex, let's not confuse it with gender. I also don't believe what some people see as a social construct (gender) is all social construct: I'm a firm believer in science and biology and neurology, and I'm not at all surprised scientists are finding some of the "social constructed" aspects of gender are actually present in newborns! It doesn't mean there aren't gender-stereotypes and gender-roles in society, but gender to me is what was there at birth - and this has something to do with our chromosomes, but actually a lot more to do with the amount of testosterone present in the womb (since this can override chromosomes to a certain extent, cf. AIS or Klinefelter's). I really would love a discussion of sex/gender on my journal, but I know I'm going to piss off people :o)
3. I'm pretty sure I have seen The Last Unicorn as a kid, but I can barely remember it.
4. I have straight hair, too, and can't grow it as long as I used to (which wasn't like whoa, long, but longer than this!)
Too many head-colds from going outside in winter with wet hair taught me a lesson - but it's only about 5 years ago I finally bought one, I think!
My mom currently cuts my hair, too - yeah, paying ridiculous amounts of money just to have 2 inches cut off the ends, no way!
5. There are some fics I can still read, but there are a lot I don't dare read for fear that even my memory of them will be sullied.
Snape is still tall to me, *blatantly disregards canon*.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-01 08:07 pm (UTC)Seriously, I only have about four time differentiations-- right this instant, not long ago (a day to, hmm, two months?), some time ago (up to two years, maybe?), and back-inna-dawn-o-time. :D I just... I drift, or maybe i just live too much in the moment, but I really really don't measure time well. I suspect I ought to post some kind of warning about this in my info, or something: "please take all time estimates with a large grain of salt, I'm guessing in a desperate attempt to sound like a normal person." :D
2. Eh, y'know, for all that I don't like it, I really don't think about it all that much. Maybe because I just don't relate to it too well? I'd be neuter if I could, so that pretty much takes me out of the running when it comes to "normal" discussion of the matter. :D
I'm scientist enough that I definitely agree there are genetic/inborn and hormonal/chemical components to both; I just dislike the way society chooses to harp on the differences rather than the similarities science finds. Yes, males and females react to certain things in different ways, etc. But please, stop trying to convince us we're two totally different species who need a university degree and a translation dictionary to communicate. (Also please to stop using every tiny difference as a reason for oppression, thanks.)
I think it's mainly the results of admitting difference that make me leery -- I know they're there, but when every difference is used against one party as a means of keeping them inferior, well. I'd rather err on the side of sameness than live in a society where just a hundred years ago "scientific study" had "proved" that women's brain size means they're more closely related to gorillas than to men on the intellectual scale. As a species we're clearly not yet capable of acknowledging difference without making a value judgment that sets one answer as more valuable than the other, so I'd rather do without.
If you do open up a discusson on your LJ, I'll definitely drop by to see the scuffling. :D It's not something I have a huge personal stake in (heh, the world according to Lance: gender and sex happen to other people), so it'd be really interesting to see other people's opinions, who are probably a lot more articulate than me.
3. Read the book! I blame Schmendrick and Molly for spawning my love of "real" romance early. Sixteen-year-old flawless princesses and overmuscled princes got nothin' on two real people with pasts, regrets, flaws, and nevertheless a true and unforgettable shared experience that ties them together. (And oh, man, Molly confronting the unicorn! There's characterisation in two lines!)
4. I am lazy; I shower at night and when I wake up it's miraculously (usually) dry. :D I hate blow dryers, they take forever and make my arm tired, and are a waste of time and make my hair feel crispy. I spend all winter sick anyway, because apparently my immune system is wired for hibernation the minute the temp drops below seventy, so wet hair isn't really a problem...
5. Hee, yes, Snapedenial is good. He will always be tall in my head, unless it's convenient for him not to be; my brain still hands me tall!Snape automatically, with a discreet little note saying that this version may have expired, click "Okay" to continue anyway. :D
no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 04:08 pm (UTC)I have a friend who absolutely refuses to discuss the subject withme, as to her admitting there are difference is the same as giving way to discrimination against women.
To me it's the opposite: it proves women have qualities and intelligences men don't! And it also proves that we are all individuals and should be judged as such. I could yammer on, but I'll give you a rest :oP
no subject
Date: 2006-11-01 07:15 pm (UTC)Ohhh, but there really are so many good fandom pairings just waiting to be discovered! I needed a break from the snarry, and now, after having found other slash couples to fawn over, I am finding my way back to my first love.
I have very very straight hair (loses curl after an hour or so, even with spray or mousse), and I love it that way.
*envies*
Mine is exactly the opposite. I hate it.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-01 08:18 pm (UTC)I guess I'm just... almost monogamous, when it comes to HP. I was never the sort who had any interest in slashing minor characters because they're pretty, or pairing off random people for the fun of it, so I just can't repleace HP/SS with, oh, Lucius/McNair or something. It's an occasional fun diversion, sure, but it's like a one-night stand -- I don't get anything from it except a bit of relaxation, an hour of naughty fun. I don't have any emotional involvement, (except maybe the story itself if it's really creatively/beautifully written,) nothing deeper that will leave me thinking about it and the what-ifs all week long at odd times.
Yes. :D They always say that curly-haired people wish theirs was straight and straight-haired people wish theirs was curly... but I never, ever wanted curly hair. (When I was a kid, my hair would tangle so badly that it took hours in a bathtub with a bottle of conditioner picking out the tangles; maybe that warped my outlook?)
Don't be too envious, though. It may be straight, but it tangles if you so much as look at it (seriously -- it tangles if you brush it too long), it has nothing by way of colour to recommend it, it has all the sheen and gloss of sandpaper, and it lies flat to my head like a sheet, no volume at all. :D It's also oily like Snape.
I have geeky hair -- it just naturally looks like I spent the last three days in front of a computer in the basement without showering. :D My hair screams "hygiene? style? HA!" It is definitely the hair of someone who read through all her classes and thought prom was stupid.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-01 08:24 pm (UTC)I never thought I would love anything but HP. Then I stumbled onto the Smallville Clex and dragged
It is definitely the hair of someone who read through all her classes and thought prom was stupid.
Hahahaha! That was me. I didn't go to prom as I thought it was lame :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-04 02:52 am (UTC)I liked it straight and even if I'd wanted curls I was too impatient to sit still for a curling iron, much less put myself through a perm. :D Messing with my hair was always a task, not a recreational activity, so straight = easy was pretty much the sum of my reasoning from a very early age. :D Any styling more complex than a ponytail was a waste of good time I could have spent playing outside.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-04 07:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 08:11 pm (UTC)I was such a tomboy as a kid. (Heh, not much better now.) If I wasn't outside, preferably playing in mud or splashing through water or building civilisations in the garden, I was reading.