dolorous_ett | A Question Meme (Reply)

Here's a question meme, which I found at ajhalluk 's journal.

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will 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.

Here are my answers to the questions she left me. Plus questions. Obviously.

1. Ingleborough, Whernside or Pen-y-Ghent?
Pen-y-Ghent. Because it seems so out of place linguistically - how can something with a name like that belong in Yorkshire? But it does - there's no arguing with a hill that size.

2. Nigel Bruce as Watson: hideous travesty or great comic fanon creation?
I wish you hadn't asked me that, as I've never seen any Sherlock Holmes on TV or film at all - I just couldn't bear to do it, as my mental images of Holmes and Watson are now too strong. It was quite a leap of faith for me even to listen to the Radio 4 serialisations (and that was worth it - I thought Michael Williams was an unbeatable Watson). That said, if Nigel Bruce is one of the actors responsible for people thinking Watson was an idiot, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed him at all.

3. Would you have eaten that artichoke, in the circumstances?
Now this question I like very much! I'm honestly not sure. Ever since I really started taking the China part of my life seriously, it's been a point of honour to eat anything a host puts in front of me, however gruesome it may seem. A lot of the time, these things actually taste quite nice. And if there's any suggestion that I'm too cowardly to do something, I tend to feel obligated at least to try.
That said, I've always told myself I'd draw the line at something that was actually still alive. I've watched people kill fish and chickens, but never crossed that boundary and killed them myself. And I don't think I'd feel any better about myself if I did.
So I suppose it would depend on the individual circumstances. To impress someone whom I desperately wanted to impress? Perhaps. To clinch a vital deal? I'd do my best - I'd have to. To save my own life, or that of a friend? Of course. To ingratiate myself with that awful bunch at Pansy's dinner party? No way.

4. If you self-insert into fiction, do you find it's your better characteristics or your worse ones (in your own opinion) you tend to insert more of?
I try not to self-insert. I'm not heroic material. I don't think I could write a full-blown self-insertion that anyone would want to read about.
From Question 3, though, you've already extracted an admission from me: that I was, at least on some level, perpetrating self-insertion in the Artichoke story. I think it's suggestive that, in the end, I manufactured a scene where Hermione didn't have to make that choice, because it's plainly a line I wouldn't feel comfortable crossing. And the whole story has a lot of cultural anxiety in it - I've certainly had to deal with that.
In general, I suppose I'd have to say I put in more negative characteristics. They are certainly more entertaining than my positive features.

5. If you had to be reincarnated as a fictional animal, which animal and why?
Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback. Spend my early years ridiculously indulged, then, when I find that confining, a chance to stretch my wings and live freely.

Anybody want questioning? You know what to do.