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Interview Meme

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 comments asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

kerravonsen

1. Have you ever found your fannish activities to have been helpful to you in Real Life? Like, skills you learned, etc.

All the time. There is so much I've learned just in supplementary skills that I can't figure I'd have learned if not for fandom. For example, knowing how to code a web page. Granted, my knowledge is extremely out of date, but it's only because of fandom that I learned at all. There was also an entry not too long ago in my LJ about copyright law--learned entirely through fandom. Then there are other, lesser used (but no less fun) skills and knowledge sets like info about swords, methods and manners of killing people by sword, the timeline of British monarchs . . . OK, mostly that's trivia stuff, but it does help when playing Trivial Pursuit. I have a pretty wide knowledge base, and a lot of that can be attributed to things characters said or knew in shows, and therefore I had to learn in order to write them.

On a more serious note, I contend that I learned more in a year of reading and writing fanfic than in four years of studying creative writing in a university. One of my pet theories of writing studies is that most people have a "crap tolerance" about the written word, and until that tolerance has been exceeded, they simply don't notice bad writing. Since they don't notice it, they can't learn from it. This theory was developed as I noticed how many new-to-fanfic people progress from liking everything, to being very discriminating. So I actually make an effort in my classes to overload the students on bad writing before we start talking about what makes it bad. This is diametrically opposed to how writing is usually taught, and it seems to be working.

I could go on, so let's just say that I can't imagine who I'd be now if not for my fannish activities. Much less who I'd know now. Almost everyone I count as a friend is someone I met through a fannish activity.

2. What does your family think of your fannish life?

Most of my family either doesn't know, or doesn't understand the extent of my fannish life. They know I've been to a few conventions; I think they know at least that some of the web pages exist. But I don't think they really get it. Of course, most of them have no idea what, exactly, it is I do in my job, and they've all graduated from college. There may be a denial problem here. I suspect that they're waiting for me to finish growing out of this phase. If so, they're going to have a long wait. My husband is very understanding, but he wouldn't be my husband if he weren't. He'll even stay in the room during The Tomorrow People, which makes him the first person I've ever dated who did. OTOH, he's just as much of a geek and fan as I am; he's just never pursued any online activities. From time to time I even catch him writing fanfic, through I've never been able to convince him to post it anywhere.

3. What's your favourite fairy tale/fable?

I'm not sure I have one. I was raised on the tales of Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby, and Grimm's Fairy Tales. I remember really enjoying the antics of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, through I couldn't now tell you any of the fables. My favorite book as a child was a child's version of Peter Pan, which I made my mom read me every night. Naturally, I was Wendy. :) But I'm not sure if that's considered a fairy tale or fable.

4. You are suddenly Emperor of the Earth. What do you do?

Initiate parent licenses. There are far too many people on this planet, and far too many people who shouldn't be having kids at all who have oodles of them. There need to be some controls set into place before we finish breeding ourselves stupid and/or breeding ourselves into extinction.

5. The aliens invade. What do you do?

Start organizing the resistance in my basement.

Perhaps I've seen too much Sci-Fi. :) I know that that's what I'd like to believe I'd do. Based on past experience, though, I'd probably sit around intending to organize the resistance, until such time as the point became moot.