Quick, hide behind the couch, it's another one of those damned memes

[varadia]

Three factors are working against me: 1). I am a sheep, 2). I am at work and horribly bored and not wanting to write my monthly report, and 3). I am insanely curious and already wonder what sorts of questions people might want to ask.

So.

Ask me a question about anything--fandom, real life, music, vegetables, etc--and I will answer you and then ask YOU a question. The whole process could be repeated if anyone wants to keep it up. If this works, by the end we could know each other so well we're sick of each other and have to quit one another for a while.

Comments

[varadia]

Literature. Either English or French literature.

I am odd, in some respects, I know *eyes chemistry*

What's your favorite thing about the English language (or things written in the English language)?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I think I have different favorite things, depending on my mood and what I've been reading. Today I'd say my favorite thing is the way it's changed vastly over the last thousand years or so, and the way that the following is still English and can be decoded as English, even though it might, on first and second glance, appear alien:

Ye knowe eek, that in forme of speche is chaunge
With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden prys, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem...

(Also, I keep using that quotation because it never fails to amaze me that Chaucer, too, was thinking in terms of processing linguistic change over time.)

Who would be playing music at your dream concert, and what kind of music would they be playing?

[varadia]

I am torn. I would love to get Tori Amos and Ani diFranco to play together, because wow, that'd be happymaking for me. And just playing different interpretations of their songs mixed with covers.

Or, alternatively, I'd like to get The John Butler Trio and maybe Nickel Creek together to play a folk/country/rock/eeee type concert.

Or both! One could be the opening act and one could be the end of the day thing! YES!

When you look outside, and it's a sunny day but really cold (assuming you've seen days like that) how does it make you feel?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Ooh. I would go to both of those concerts, yes I would.

On sunny but really cold days, I feel happy and wide awake. Except that I often wonder, at moments like that, what I'm doing in Philadelphia when it is an equally sunny day and perfectly warm in my other home in northern California.

If someone could convince you to take on a Dark is Rising character, who would you like?

[varadia]

One of the Drew brothers, perhaps, because I was very fond of them back in the day when I read the series obsessively and repetitively. Or Hawkin, because I am a sucker for tragedy.

If you could design yourself a dream, what would you make?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

The kind of dream in which I could have nonsensical conversations with those of my friends who don't really exist -- fictional characters and the like. Either that, or a dream in which I get a research trip to Lucien's library... preferably the kind of research trip that lets me have coherent notes from the experience neatly written down in my notebook when I wake up.

How much tea can you drink in a day?

[varadia]

I think I can make about three cups of normal tea, and maybe four glasses of iced tea when it's really hot.

Chai is limited to one cup. I don't know why.

What criteria, such as they are, get you to app a character?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

1) I have to hear him or her in my head. This generally means I have to know the character's source material very, very well, and that I have to have absorbed, or be able to absorb, the character's mode of speaking, personal values and attitudes so deeply that I don't really have to think about them to play the character. Of course, I've succeeded more and less with each individual character; there's a reason I don't play Lyra very often. I don't know her from the inside the way I know Bran.

2) I have to think there's something about the character that needs to be explored in more depth, like an untold story or an unfinished plot arc. I need a reason to bring my characters to Milliways. If canon's done everything necessary to complete the characters' narratives, I prefer not to interfere.

Let me turn the question back on you. Why do you choose characters to app?

[varadia]

Generally I choose characters because I want to see how a particular personality type will interact with the bar. Sometimes there is a specific bit of something that canon left unresolved that I'd like to see wrapped up, like with Ed and Hunter, to some extent. Sometimes it's a voice that I hear very strongly and instinctively *eyes Raven*.

Sometimes it is because people ask me to, and I reread canon and the character feels like it fits. Then I develop things I want to explore with them by bar-interactions--like with Erin and Avar and Nynaeve. I wasn't sure what they'd really do outside of family interactions until I got them in and found out Erin gets along with Wells, and Avar wants to build spaceships, or at least learn how they work (and kinda mentor Wellard), and that Nynaeve --well, her I don't know yet. she's standoffish. But . .. does that make sense?

Probably it boils down to because I like them, and I want to see how they change with me pulling the strings.

If you could choose a place to visit and live, would it be under the ocean or on top of a mountain?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

That does make sense, yes.

Mountain, absolutely. I get claustrophobic, and nothing makes me happier than having vast wide spaces below me to gawk at.

If you could have a nonstandard pet -- something of the squid or koala or demon bunny variety -- what kind of nonstandard pet would you like?

[varadia]

I'd like a very tiny winged serpent, honestly. Well, not very tiny, but not anaconda-sized snake either.

Because . . . that would be really bad. Airplanes would get eaten.

Should you find yourself on a desert island, would you prefer to think you were alone or to know that there were people over the ridge, but they'd try to kill you if they saw you?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

*pets the winged serpent*

Oooh, good question. I'd rather feel alone and relatively safe, all things considered. I think.

What's your favorite chemical?

[varadia]

I have a sort of love/hate relationship with 2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid. *eyes it* I think I got the name right.

That, and sugar.

What is your least favorite book series of all time?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Well, it feels like cheating to pick a series that I only read twenty pages into one volume and stopped. By definition, though, if I read enough volumes of a series to feel like I can comment on the whole thing, I must have liked something about the series at one point even if I have no respect for it now.

I think I'll go for Pern. Think of all of those dragons eating weird evil things coming from the sky, and all of those characters without any personality at all.

How long have you been reading Native American mythology, and what brought you to it?

[varadia]

I've been reading it in fits and starts since maybe 4rd grade or so. *considers* Maybe 5th. I remember being entirely fascinated by the westward expansion kiddie-version in our social studies class, and being curious about what 'really' happened. I'd just come off a kick of greek myths, so I was curious about how other culture's stories differed (though not, of course, quite in those terms), and I read everything I could get my hands on. Non-fiction accounts, kids books about captives and intermarrying and everything. Most of it was pretty historical stuff--I don't know why I didn't look into modern information about the reservations and what that means and how all that ended up falling out now. Anyway, in amongst all the culture and the history and the ends of things, I read the transcribed/translated versions of stories, and just--at the time I was also fascinated with animals, and the two just mixed together in a lot of places, and I was in heaven.

Yeah. So.

How often to you want to chuck in this version of the life you lead and try something dramatically different? What kind of dramatically different do you tend to go for?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly rarely, actually. I would never say that academia has no downsides, but I honestly cannot think of anything I'd rather be doing than research in the humanities. I don't have the ability to invent characters, so I can't write fiction, and even if my muse were more reliable than she is, I couldn't make a living on poetry. I'm not talented at all in any of the other arts, I don't have any patience for 9-5 office jobs, and I like my students to be approaching adulthood by the time I have to teach them. I suppose I could be a librarian and read books and recommend them to people all day, but I sort of do that anyway. There was a time I considered being a rabbi, but that wasn't really an option* and I'd be awful at pastoral care anyway.

Guess I'm just destined for academia.

*I interrupt this answer to send more prayers for wisdom in the general direction of the currently-convened Committee for Jewish Law and Standards. (http://rymenhild.livejournal.com/71987.html)

How often do you want to try something different?