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1. Leave me a comment saying, 'Interview me'.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
1) You list sci fi as an interest. Who are your favourite authors, and why?
I have 4 shelves in my library dedicated to Sci-fi/Fantasy books. I lump them together because my favourites seem to overlap genres. I revere Tolkien. I own and have read everything I’ve ever known him to publish in book form. I very much enjoy epic stories. I guess that comes from a childhood of reading classics like The Odyssey and Divine Comedy. I also have always enjoyed book series with story arcs. Even the Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes mysteries had arcs in the main character’s stories and development. To me, learning something new about the protagonist was as fun as the mystery of that story itself. Tolkien has a long arc, sweeping adventure, love stories (I’m speaking of noble love rather than the silly romance novels with their heaving breasts and throbbing members), scenic travels through foreign and interesting landscapes, encounters with alien beings (orcs, elves, balrogs, etc.) and eloquent writing. I read for detail, rhythm, I want a scene painted in my mind, I want to understand my characters motives… Tolkien is a master of all these elements.
I also enjoy wit. Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Jim Butcher make me laugh or smile at least once every 10 pages while being incredibly clever.
Connie Willis is one of my favourites because she combines sci-fi/fantasy with historical settings. I adore historical novels and she is absolutely brilliant about taking a character from modern times, tossing them into some point of the past and painting a very vivid picture of that point in time. My favourite of her books is The Doomsday Book.
I have a lot of Anne Rice books as well. I like her older writing better than her more recent works, but I very much enjoy her as “light reading.” Besides, I’m a sucker for vampire and witch novels.
I also really liked the Empire trilogy by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts. Mr. Feist had written the Riftwar Trilogy and I loved that, but the Empire series far surpassed it in cleverness, scope and style. I don’t remember sleeping while I read those books.
2) As an RPG fan what characters have you played, and who are your favourites?
Goodness, I’ve played lots of characters and I love most of them. I love to make characters with quirks, something to sink my teeth into as a player. (Please note how I cleverly, if not correctly, averted leaving a preposition at the end of that sentence, thus avoiding messy entanglements with the grammar police.)
I enjoy exploring the use of accents, attitudes and finding some kind of character theme, but my best characters have always been the ones to have running tiffs with other player characters. I had a really large, dumb barbarian woman who bickered constantly with the druid over everything. She also simply knew for a fact that she was the stealthiest, most persuasive, gentlest woman in the world. The trouble was, she was loud, raucous, petulant, overbearing and behaved much like a bull in a china shop. *swoon*
I also really enjoyed a half cat, half human character I played. She spoke with a Russian accent and had all the attitude of a fatalist Dostoyevsky character crossed with militant lesbian. She was fun… especially since my player group is mostly male. *in my best Russian accent* “I have brrrreasts, I am prrrroud of them so I wear forrrm fitting leatherrr arrrmour. You arrrre looking at my brrreasts, you male pig-dog! I vill now cut out yourrrr eyeballs.” *grins madly*
I had a long running vampire with a British accent straight out of Arthurian legends. I modeled her after Vivian and crossed centuries and Europe with her.
I’m currently playing a male warlock who thinks he’s a wizard. He wears wizard robes and a floppy pointed hat. If Gandalf was gray and Radagast was brown, my “wizard” wears mauve with frilly bits of lace chemise peeking from under his robes. He thinks everything is epic and completely believes his staff is made of sentient wood. He has named his staff Percival and they occasionally have rather bickery arguments about what they should do next.
I guess any character is fun, though, if you are playing with the right group of people. We laugh a great deal when we’re together and that’s the greatest fun, simply enjoying ourselves.
3) " Being a woman" is listed among your interests. What is your take on feminists and feminist writers?
To be honest, I have never considered myself a feminist. I guess I feel that way because I don’t consider myself an activist. I support and believe in the cause; I am ever so grateful for the progress made to date that allows me all the privileges I have come to take for granted; but I am not out there on the front lines nor at any rallies or marches. I don’t even read feminist books. My general position in life is as an “inactivist.” I promote my causes by living my life as an expression of those causes. I wouldn’t say I act like a feminist as much as I promote equality on a broad scope. I realize that everyone has their biases and humans tend to categorize by archetypes, but in general, I’d rather see people treated equally as deserved. If I need to hire someone for a job, I’m going to favour the person with the right qualifications and best personality to mesh with their coworkers regardless of sex, race, religion or colour. If that means I hire all Caucasian men, then that’s what I need to do until someone else with the right qualifications makes themselves available.
I listed being a woman among my interests because I feel I am fortunate, in this modern climate, to be exactly who I am. I was born with all the female bits, but I walk the line between the feminine and the masculine in many ways. I am the fix-it person of the house. I build things, do all the repairs, I plumb, I mow, I crawl under the house to run network wires for the computers and I held a traditionally male job for 10 years. I love the feeling of rolling up my sleeves, donning my tool belt and wielding my power tools for the benefit of the household. When my husband says he wishes something were raised a bit higher, I race off to the garage and after some buzzing, banging and sanding, I emerge some time later with the solution. I love that feeling.
By the same token, I love wearing skirts, I make sparkly jewelry to wear, I have long hair and decorate my home in textures with soft furnishings, draped in green plants, happy colours and scented candles. I think my brain is wired halfway between the sexes. I embrace both my butch and feminine sides and I am thrilled to live at a time where I am relatively free of scorn for doing so. I know men who identify very strongly with their feminine side and they are often considered pariahs of their gender. No one has the right to make me feel less of a human for being different. I’ve been fortunate enough to come to terms with my sexuality and my differences without doing so under the microscope of society. I found a nice little corner of the closet to work in until I was self-actualized enough to stride out of it confidently. I am very happy to have been born a woman.
4) You manage to go back in time and meet your younger self at any age. What would you tell yourself about what you have learned?
Wow. I could write a whole book of advice to myself. I would congratulate myself on holding tightly to my sanity while waiting for that magic age of adulthood when I could leave the horrors of childhood behind me. I would confirm that it really does become so much easier as an adult and that the quality of my life would skyrocket. I would explain to myself that the environment of my work was not healthy and that I should only keep that job for a few years rather than a decade… or wear a haz-mat suit. I would tell myself that the quality of my schoolwork was less important than spending more quality time with my Dad before he died. One never knows how little time one has and, though I have no regrets in our relationship, I am saddened that he passed away right before I became interesting as a human being. I also would probably have encouraged myself to pack up and move to Eugene sooner. I really wasn’t happy at all on the east coast.
5) Who are your favourite characters in fiction, and why?
Ayla in the Clan of the Cave Bear book and the following Earth’s Children series. She is a strong, independent woman who gives of herself, nurtures and protects. Her convictions are unwavering, her loyalty is unquestionable, her strength is immeasurable, and her courage is deeper than the ocean.
I also really liked the character John from Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx. He had to live completely by his wits, take care of his mother and deduce the mystery of his family… all before he comes of age.
Portia in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. She sees what needs to be done and has the bravery and intelligence to make it happen.
And those are just to name three.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
1) You list sci fi as an interest. Who are your favourite authors, and why?
I have 4 shelves in my library dedicated to Sci-fi/Fantasy books. I lump them together because my favourites seem to overlap genres. I revere Tolkien. I own and have read everything I’ve ever known him to publish in book form. I very much enjoy epic stories. I guess that comes from a childhood of reading classics like The Odyssey and Divine Comedy. I also have always enjoyed book series with story arcs. Even the Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes mysteries had arcs in the main character’s stories and development. To me, learning something new about the protagonist was as fun as the mystery of that story itself. Tolkien has a long arc, sweeping adventure, love stories (I’m speaking of noble love rather than the silly romance novels with their heaving breasts and throbbing members), scenic travels through foreign and interesting landscapes, encounters with alien beings (orcs, elves, balrogs, etc.) and eloquent writing. I read for detail, rhythm, I want a scene painted in my mind, I want to understand my characters motives… Tolkien is a master of all these elements.
I also enjoy wit. Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Jim Butcher make me laugh or smile at least once every 10 pages while being incredibly clever.
Connie Willis is one of my favourites because she combines sci-fi/fantasy with historical settings. I adore historical novels and she is absolutely brilliant about taking a character from modern times, tossing them into some point of the past and painting a very vivid picture of that point in time. My favourite of her books is The Doomsday Book.
I have a lot of Anne Rice books as well. I like her older writing better than her more recent works, but I very much enjoy her as “light reading.” Besides, I’m a sucker for vampire and witch novels.
I also really liked the Empire trilogy by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts. Mr. Feist had written the Riftwar Trilogy and I loved that, but the Empire series far surpassed it in cleverness, scope and style. I don’t remember sleeping while I read those books.
2) As an RPG fan what characters have you played, and who are your favourites?
Goodness, I’ve played lots of characters and I love most of them. I love to make characters with quirks, something to sink my teeth into as a player. (Please note how I cleverly, if not correctly, averted leaving a preposition at the end of that sentence, thus avoiding messy entanglements with the grammar police.)
I enjoy exploring the use of accents, attitudes and finding some kind of character theme, but my best characters have always been the ones to have running tiffs with other player characters. I had a really large, dumb barbarian woman who bickered constantly with the druid over everything. She also simply knew for a fact that she was the stealthiest, most persuasive, gentlest woman in the world. The trouble was, she was loud, raucous, petulant, overbearing and behaved much like a bull in a china shop. *swoon*
I also really enjoyed a half cat, half human character I played. She spoke with a Russian accent and had all the attitude of a fatalist Dostoyevsky character crossed with militant lesbian. She was fun… especially since my player group is mostly male. *in my best Russian accent* “I have brrrreasts, I am prrrroud of them so I wear forrrm fitting leatherrr arrrmour. You arrrre looking at my brrreasts, you male pig-dog! I vill now cut out yourrrr eyeballs.” *grins madly*
I had a long running vampire with a British accent straight out of Arthurian legends. I modeled her after Vivian and crossed centuries and Europe with her.
I’m currently playing a male warlock who thinks he’s a wizard. He wears wizard robes and a floppy pointed hat. If Gandalf was gray and Radagast was brown, my “wizard” wears mauve with frilly bits of lace chemise peeking from under his robes. He thinks everything is epic and completely believes his staff is made of sentient wood. He has named his staff Percival and they occasionally have rather bickery arguments about what they should do next.
I guess any character is fun, though, if you are playing with the right group of people. We laugh a great deal when we’re together and that’s the greatest fun, simply enjoying ourselves.
3) " Being a woman" is listed among your interests. What is your take on feminists and feminist writers?
To be honest, I have never considered myself a feminist. I guess I feel that way because I don’t consider myself an activist. I support and believe in the cause; I am ever so grateful for the progress made to date that allows me all the privileges I have come to take for granted; but I am not out there on the front lines nor at any rallies or marches. I don’t even read feminist books. My general position in life is as an “inactivist.” I promote my causes by living my life as an expression of those causes. I wouldn’t say I act like a feminist as much as I promote equality on a broad scope. I realize that everyone has their biases and humans tend to categorize by archetypes, but in general, I’d rather see people treated equally as deserved. If I need to hire someone for a job, I’m going to favour the person with the right qualifications and best personality to mesh with their coworkers regardless of sex, race, religion or colour. If that means I hire all Caucasian men, then that’s what I need to do until someone else with the right qualifications makes themselves available.
I listed being a woman among my interests because I feel I am fortunate, in this modern climate, to be exactly who I am. I was born with all the female bits, but I walk the line between the feminine and the masculine in many ways. I am the fix-it person of the house. I build things, do all the repairs, I plumb, I mow, I crawl under the house to run network wires for the computers and I held a traditionally male job for 10 years. I love the feeling of rolling up my sleeves, donning my tool belt and wielding my power tools for the benefit of the household. When my husband says he wishes something were raised a bit higher, I race off to the garage and after some buzzing, banging and sanding, I emerge some time later with the solution. I love that feeling.
By the same token, I love wearing skirts, I make sparkly jewelry to wear, I have long hair and decorate my home in textures with soft furnishings, draped in green plants, happy colours and scented candles. I think my brain is wired halfway between the sexes. I embrace both my butch and feminine sides and I am thrilled to live at a time where I am relatively free of scorn for doing so. I know men who identify very strongly with their feminine side and they are often considered pariahs of their gender. No one has the right to make me feel less of a human for being different. I’ve been fortunate enough to come to terms with my sexuality and my differences without doing so under the microscope of society. I found a nice little corner of the closet to work in until I was self-actualized enough to stride out of it confidently. I am very happy to have been born a woman.
4) You manage to go back in time and meet your younger self at any age. What would you tell yourself about what you have learned?
Wow. I could write a whole book of advice to myself. I would congratulate myself on holding tightly to my sanity while waiting for that magic age of adulthood when I could leave the horrors of childhood behind me. I would confirm that it really does become so much easier as an adult and that the quality of my life would skyrocket. I would explain to myself that the environment of my work was not healthy and that I should only keep that job for a few years rather than a decade… or wear a haz-mat suit. I would tell myself that the quality of my schoolwork was less important than spending more quality time with my Dad before he died. One never knows how little time one has and, though I have no regrets in our relationship, I am saddened that he passed away right before I became interesting as a human being. I also would probably have encouraged myself to pack up and move to Eugene sooner. I really wasn’t happy at all on the east coast.
5) Who are your favourite characters in fiction, and why?
Ayla in the Clan of the Cave Bear book and the following Earth’s Children series. She is a strong, independent woman who gives of herself, nurtures and protects. Her convictions are unwavering, her loyalty is unquestionable, her strength is immeasurable, and her courage is deeper than the ocean.
I also really liked the character John from Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx. He had to live completely by his wits, take care of his mother and deduce the mystery of his family… all before he comes of age.
Portia in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. She sees what needs to be done and has the bravery and intelligence to make it happen.
And those are just to name three.
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