That Comments on Fandom Meme
Fifteen questions about three fandoms. shiplizard asked me about Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire and Discworld.
HARRY POTTER
01. The first character I fell in love with: Hermione Granger. Hermione at eleven is a LOT like I was at that age.
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Luna Lovegood.. At first she just seemed weird, but then I realized that she had quite a bit more insight and imagination that most of the wizarding world. And she dealt with bullying and the loss of a beloved parent with true class.
03. The character everyone else loves that I don't: Harry Potter. After the last two books, I just can't STAND him. Also, Draco Malfoy. I don't get the appeal of that kid, I honestly don't.
04. The character I love that everyone else hates: This won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, but Peter Pettigrew. There's enough information about him in the books hint at wonderful complexity--one of three friends of the protagonist's father, one of the three youngest Animagi in wizarding history...and yet he betrays his friends to a leader that he visibly hates and fears. Even his own boss says that Peter wouldn't BE with the Death eaters if he had a chance of going back to the other side. It's hard to think of a more reluctant villain. I'll always regret the fact that Rowling couldn't see past Peter's fear ("How I loathe a coward!" she's said in several interviews, and about several characters) and dismissed much of the complexity that she herself created.
05. The character I used to love but don't any longer: McGonagall, unfortunately. I loved McGonagall for most of the series. She was strong, brave and possessed a snoutful of integrity. Then Dumbledore died and her entire personality changed. The woman who had no problem telling off Umbridge started wondering if she should ask the Ministry's permission to have Dumbledore buried on the grounds of Hogwarts and told Harry that his using an Unforgivable Curse because she'd been spat at was "very gallant." NO, McGonagall. NO.
06. The character I would shag anytime: Regulus, probably.
07. The character I want to be like: I'd like to have Luna's imagination and sense of wonder.
08. The character I'd slap: DUMBLEDORE. Dear God, I'd slap Albus Dumbledore silly for being the lying, flattering, manipulative old toad that he is. Also Hermione, for fucking with her parents' memories and minds. There are some things you don't get to do and remain a good person. That's one of them.
09. A pairing that I love: Sirius/Remus. Ginny/Luna. Neville/Luna. Snape/Lucius. Peter/Dorcas Meadowes. Regulus/Menolly (yes, the one from Pern; this is a pairing that popped up in an RPG and I've loved it ever since). Also, Regulus/Anne Vincent, which I've heard a great deal about from quinby.
10. A pairing that I hate: Remus/Tonks. I wouldn't have hated it if, say, OotP Remus and OotP Tonks had become friends and gradually fallen in love. I hate it because it basically removed their existing personalities and turned them into completely different people. Remus went from being an intelligent man with quiet courage and a sense of humor who had to cope with a debilitating condition that terrified the immediate world to a wishy-washy chap who abruptly started speaking like both Snape and a pantomime demon king. Tonks went from being a strong member of the Order with a power that was both incredible and potentially useful in war and became a damsel in distress whose power stopped working when she didn't have her maaaaaan.
11. Favorite character: Peter, I'd say.
12. My five favorite characters: This is exempting the last two books, because I hated pretty much EVERYONE after Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. However, in no particular order: Peter, Regulus, Luna, Remus and McGonagall.
13. My five least favorite characters: Harry, Albus Dumbledore, Snape, Hermione and Umbridge.
14. Which character I am most like: Probably Aberforth Dumbledore. We're both willing to come out and say that the emperor has no clothes on.
15. My deep, dark fandom secret: In my head canon, Regulus is alive and well and living...elsewhere. It doesn't matter what universe he's in, or whether he's in Tahiti, Australia, Harper Hall or London Below--he's somewhere, he's alive and he's happy. (And stunned that no one has ever figured out that Kreacher's Memory Charm-assisted story about his death was, to be blunt, greatly exaggerated.)
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE
01. The first character I fell in love with: Arya Stark, who started out as a tomboyish little girl of nine. She's changed a lot--I think she's close to psychotic now, as a matter of fact--but she still fascinates me.
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Petyr Baelish. I hated him in the beginning, but by God, he's turned into a Magnificent Bastard. Honorable mention goes to Samwell Tarly, who annoyed me enormously at first but who won me over with his compassion for Craster's daughter, Gilly, and his desperate courage in his fight with the undead and the Others, despite being scared blind. Also, Sam's ability to manipulate an election was a thing of beauty.
03. The character everyone else loves that I don't: Jon Snow. I just don't get the appeal of Jon Snow. I don't hate him, but he bores me.
04. The character I love that everyone else hates: Sansa Stark. I couldn't stand her at first--the ladylike older sister with the romantic and dangerously naive view of life. But she toughens up, learns and adapts. I love that she's learned from her mistakes and is becoming considerably more politically savvy. (Which doesn't stop the bad stuff from happening. This IS Martin, after all.) If Martin continues the series, I'll be interested to see what she becomes as she grows up.
05. The character I used to love but don't any longer: Catelyn Stark. I liked her at the beginning, even after she displayed true resentment for Jon, her husband's supposed bastard son. But...well...the Red Wedding, insanity and resurrection turned her into a stern and implacable killer, incapable of listening to anyone else or even considering that she might be wrong.
06. The character I would shag anytime: Can't think of any I'd like to shag.
07. The character I want to be like: Um...none of them. They've all had truly horrible luck and painful experiences, and I don't want to go through any of the agony that Martin visits on his characters.
08. The character I'd slap: Cersei Lannister Baratheon, the Queen of Westeros. She's a fascinating character, yes, but she's also manipulative, vicious, promiscuously incestuous ("No one can say that my sister does not love her family," sighs her dwarf brother Tyrion), homicidal (people who disagree with her tend to die or disappear) and suffering from a truly ghastly case of entitlement.
09. A pairing that I love: Renly Baratheon/Loras Tyrell. I really love those two, even though it didn't end happily. (Not a spoiler, because, again, it's MARTIN. Nothing ends happily.) Also, Samwell Tarly/Gilly, even though this can't possibly go anywhere, at least not for long.
10. A pairing that I hate: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth. I know a lot of people like this pairing--but I have severe problems with Jaime. Yes, he's become more interesting and more comprehensible...but he threw a six-year-old boy out of a window because if the boy died, there wouldn't be any living witness that he'd been screwing his twin sister. I can't get past that. I think Brienne deserves someone to love her, yes, but she deserves someone better than Jaime.
11. Favorite character: Tyrion Lannister. I've liked him since the beginning. There's no way to dislike an ugly, intelligent, snarky dwarf who can outsmart and out-think just about everyone.
12. My five favorite characters: Tyrion Lannister, Arya Stark, Samwell Tarly, Daenerys Targaryen and Sansa Stark.
13. My five least favorite characters: Catelyn Stark (see above), Jon Snow (ditto), Joffrey Baratheon (a sociopathic and abusive prince--God, I hate him), Theon Greyjoy (betraying the people who fostered you by taking over their home and lands and ordering an eight-year-old and a four-year-old hunted down like animals and killed really does not earn you points with me) and Lord Frey (he turned his daughter's wedding Catelyn Stark's brother into a massacre because Catelyn's son Robb broke his promise to marry one of Frey's female relatives. Geez, overreaction much?).
14. Which character I am most like: No clue.
15. My deep, dark fandom secret: I never get any of the subtle clues Martin drops. Never. The whole bit about Jon possibly not being Ned's son? Totally did not get that. Alleras/Sarella debate? Didn't even notice this. Every clue about things that might be secretly going on, I have to pick up in forums, because I don't see them when I read the books.
shiplizard asked me about Discworld as a third fandom, but I answered questions about that here, and my answers haven't changed since. So I'll pick my oldest fandom--the one I started loving when I was about seven.
STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES
01. The first character I fell in love with: Spock. No question about it. Extremely bright but an alien even within his own society...yeah, I identified with this just a little.
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Uhura.
I don't know if I can explain what a huge deal Uhura was to a little girl circa 1968-1969. I lived in a very white suburb, went to a school that was mostly white and had parents who freely admitted being terrified of blacks. My main exposure to blacks was through television news. I saw a great many protests showing black people shouting, fleeing from police, being gassed in riots, and so on. My impression was that black people were very angry and that almost everyone was angry back at them, but I had no idea why.
And I remember seeing Martin Luther King's funeral--or bits of it--on television the previous spring. I recall a couple of black kids at school yelling at me when MLK was assassinated, "You killed our King!" Which confused the life out of me, as I hadn't known that King even existed. I remember spending a lot of time trying to figure out where the kingdom of the blacks was in America (I figured it was a separate area, like the Indian reservations) and wondering who was in charge now that the king was dead.
Enter Uhura, who managed to counteract most of what I was seeing on TV and hearing from my parents just by existing.
Uhura showed me that a black woman could exist in a world of science and technology and completely belong there. That a black woman could be intelligent and capable and brave and artistically gifted, and that no one would think this was in any way unusual. That she could not only be part of the crew but part of the bridge crew, which my seven-year-old self interpreted as being in the line of command. That she could be respected by her captain and fellow crew members. That she could be treated no different from anyone else because, in the eyes of her shipmates, she was no different from anyone else. That a dark-skinned black woman could be unmistakeably beautiful.
I can hear people who were raised twenty to forty years later saying, "Well, of course!" But there was no "of course" about any of this in 1969. Uhura was a revolution. The communications officer taught me a great deal. Most of all, she showed me that my family's ingrained racism was, to use Mr. Spock's favorite word, "illogical."
Thank you, Nichelle Nichols.
03. The character everyone else loves that I don't: T'Pring, I think. I never understood why she didn't try telling someone that she didn't want to marry Spock, find a way of blocking the mental link, refuse to show up at the pon farr ceremony...you know, something simpler than manipulating Spock into a position where he was all but certain to kill his best friend.
04. The character I love that everyone else hates: Christine Chapel. I disliked her initially, probably because the writers rarely had her doing anything except mooning over Spock, and that got old pretty fast. But she did appear in a few episodes where she actually got to do something, and the woman I glimpsed at those times was a lot stronger and more capable--and had gone through a lot more emotional hell--than the usual run of scripts delved into. I regret that, like Uhura, Chapel rarely got the opportunity to showcase her character's skills and strengths, because I think that if we'd seen that regularly, it would have been amazing.
05. The character I used to love but don't any longer: No one. I still love 'em all.
06. The character I would shag anytime: This is a tough one. I wouldn't do Kirk, because you know exactly who he's been with--EVERYONE. Spock didn't seem to have much of a sex drive until he was in pon farr which, given the intensity of the emotions involved, probably would have been pretty violent. If I have to choose, I guess I'd go with McCoy--he could be intelligent and funny and gentlemanly all at the same time.
07. The character I want to be like: All of the regulars have qualities I'd like to emulate. But I'd like to have Kirk's leadership qualities, Spock's logic, Scotty's knack with machines (which I will never possess, alas; machines don't like me), Uhura's humor, singing voice and grace under pressure, and Chapel's ability to bluff and stand tough when she needed to.
08. The character I'd slap: Harcourt Fenton Mudd. I know he's not a regular, but the interstellar con man is definitely slapworthy.
09. A pairing that I love: Kirk/Edith Keeler. This one still breaks my heart. And whether Edith lived or died, there could be no happy ending.
10. A pairing that I hate: I'm probably the least shippy person in the universe, so this is tough. But I have to admit that while I don't hate it, I've never understood the Spock/McCoy pairing. I have no problem with them as friends, but I can't see them as a couple.
11. Favorite character: Spock. Not even a question.
12. My five favorite characters: Spock; Kirk; Uhura; McCoy; Amanda Grayson. (I will never, ever forgive Star Trek Reboot for fridging Amanda. That was all kinds of wrong.)
13. My five least favorite characters: In no particular order:
The lights of Zetar (blinking, flashing lights are seizure-inducing, as well as hurting my head and my eyes);
Hengist (well, the version possessed by the homicidal entity Redjac; he was probably my first fictional exposure to the concept of a serial killer, even though the term didn't exist at the time);
Dr. Tristan Adams, director of the Tantalus Penal Colony (he messed with people's minds, wiping their memories, implanting false ones and conditionaing people to think and do as he said, all by means of an alien device);
John Gill (a cultural observer and historian who deliberately reshaped a fragmented society into the most efficient one he could think of, Nazi Germany; why he thought this was a good idea, I'll never know); and
Landru (the mind-controlling computer in "Return of the Archons").
14. Which character I am most like: I was a lot like Spock when I was younger. Now...I don't know.
15. My deep, dark fandom secret: I never heard of the Kirk/Spock pairing until I was in college and reading the book Star Trek Lives! I had read fanfic by then (most of it published in fanzines), but it was either gen or very mild het.
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HARRY POTTER
01. The first character I fell in love with: Hermione Granger. Hermione at eleven is a LOT like I was at that age.
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Luna Lovegood.. At first she just seemed weird, but then I realized that she had quite a bit more insight and imagination that most of the wizarding world. And she dealt with bullying and the loss of a beloved parent with true class.
03. The character everyone else loves that I don't: Harry Potter. After the last two books, I just can't STAND him. Also, Draco Malfoy. I don't get the appeal of that kid, I honestly don't.
04. The character I love that everyone else hates: This won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, but Peter Pettigrew. There's enough information about him in the books hint at wonderful complexity--one of three friends of the protagonist's father, one of the three youngest Animagi in wizarding history...and yet he betrays his friends to a leader that he visibly hates and fears. Even his own boss says that Peter wouldn't BE with the Death eaters if he had a chance of going back to the other side. It's hard to think of a more reluctant villain. I'll always regret the fact that Rowling couldn't see past Peter's fear ("How I loathe a coward!" she's said in several interviews, and about several characters) and dismissed much of the complexity that she herself created.
05. The character I used to love but don't any longer: McGonagall, unfortunately. I loved McGonagall for most of the series. She was strong, brave and possessed a snoutful of integrity. Then Dumbledore died and her entire personality changed. The woman who had no problem telling off Umbridge started wondering if she should ask the Ministry's permission to have Dumbledore buried on the grounds of Hogwarts and told Harry that his using an Unforgivable Curse because she'd been spat at was "very gallant." NO, McGonagall. NO.
06. The character I would shag anytime: Regulus, probably.
07. The character I want to be like: I'd like to have Luna's imagination and sense of wonder.
08. The character I'd slap: DUMBLEDORE. Dear God, I'd slap Albus Dumbledore silly for being the lying, flattering, manipulative old toad that he is. Also Hermione, for fucking with her parents' memories and minds. There are some things you don't get to do and remain a good person. That's one of them.
09. A pairing that I love: Sirius/Remus. Ginny/Luna. Neville/Luna. Snape/Lucius. Peter/Dorcas Meadowes. Regulus/Menolly (yes, the one from Pern; this is a pairing that popped up in an RPG and I've loved it ever since). Also, Regulus/Anne Vincent, which I've heard a great deal about from quinby.
10. A pairing that I hate: Remus/Tonks. I wouldn't have hated it if, say, OotP Remus and OotP Tonks had become friends and gradually fallen in love. I hate it because it basically removed their existing personalities and turned them into completely different people. Remus went from being an intelligent man with quiet courage and a sense of humor who had to cope with a debilitating condition that terrified the immediate world to a wishy-washy chap who abruptly started speaking like both Snape and a pantomime demon king. Tonks went from being a strong member of the Order with a power that was both incredible and potentially useful in war and became a damsel in distress whose power stopped working when she didn't have her maaaaaan.
11. Favorite character: Peter, I'd say.
12. My five favorite characters: This is exempting the last two books, because I hated pretty much EVERYONE after Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. However, in no particular order: Peter, Regulus, Luna, Remus and McGonagall.
13. My five least favorite characters: Harry, Albus Dumbledore, Snape, Hermione and Umbridge.
14. Which character I am most like: Probably Aberforth Dumbledore. We're both willing to come out and say that the emperor has no clothes on.
15. My deep, dark fandom secret: In my head canon, Regulus is alive and well and living...elsewhere. It doesn't matter what universe he's in, or whether he's in Tahiti, Australia, Harper Hall or London Below--he's somewhere, he's alive and he's happy. (And stunned that no one has ever figured out that Kreacher's Memory Charm-assisted story about his death was, to be blunt, greatly exaggerated.)
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE
01. The first character I fell in love with: Arya Stark, who started out as a tomboyish little girl of nine. She's changed a lot--I think she's close to psychotic now, as a matter of fact--but she still fascinates me.
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Petyr Baelish. I hated him in the beginning, but by God, he's turned into a Magnificent Bastard. Honorable mention goes to Samwell Tarly, who annoyed me enormously at first but who won me over with his compassion for Craster's daughter, Gilly, and his desperate courage in his fight with the undead and the Others, despite being scared blind. Also, Sam's ability to manipulate an election was a thing of beauty.
03. The character everyone else loves that I don't: Jon Snow. I just don't get the appeal of Jon Snow. I don't hate him, but he bores me.
04. The character I love that everyone else hates: Sansa Stark. I couldn't stand her at first--the ladylike older sister with the romantic and dangerously naive view of life. But she toughens up, learns and adapts. I love that she's learned from her mistakes and is becoming considerably more politically savvy. (Which doesn't stop the bad stuff from happening. This IS Martin, after all.) If Martin continues the series, I'll be interested to see what she becomes as she grows up.
05. The character I used to love but don't any longer: Catelyn Stark. I liked her at the beginning, even after she displayed true resentment for Jon, her husband's supposed bastard son. But...well...the Red Wedding, insanity and resurrection turned her into a stern and implacable killer, incapable of listening to anyone else or even considering that she might be wrong.
06. The character I would shag anytime: Can't think of any I'd like to shag.
07. The character I want to be like: Um...none of them. They've all had truly horrible luck and painful experiences, and I don't want to go through any of the agony that Martin visits on his characters.
08. The character I'd slap: Cersei Lannister Baratheon, the Queen of Westeros. She's a fascinating character, yes, but she's also manipulative, vicious, promiscuously incestuous ("No one can say that my sister does not love her family," sighs her dwarf brother Tyrion), homicidal (people who disagree with her tend to die or disappear) and suffering from a truly ghastly case of entitlement.
09. A pairing that I love: Renly Baratheon/Loras Tyrell. I really love those two, even though it didn't end happily. (Not a spoiler, because, again, it's MARTIN. Nothing ends happily.) Also, Samwell Tarly/Gilly, even though this can't possibly go anywhere, at least not for long.
10. A pairing that I hate: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth. I know a lot of people like this pairing--but I have severe problems with Jaime. Yes, he's become more interesting and more comprehensible...but he threw a six-year-old boy out of a window because if the boy died, there wouldn't be any living witness that he'd been screwing his twin sister. I can't get past that. I think Brienne deserves someone to love her, yes, but she deserves someone better than Jaime.
11. Favorite character: Tyrion Lannister. I've liked him since the beginning. There's no way to dislike an ugly, intelligent, snarky dwarf who can outsmart and out-think just about everyone.
12. My five favorite characters: Tyrion Lannister, Arya Stark, Samwell Tarly, Daenerys Targaryen and Sansa Stark.
13. My five least favorite characters: Catelyn Stark (see above), Jon Snow (ditto), Joffrey Baratheon (a sociopathic and abusive prince--God, I hate him), Theon Greyjoy (betraying the people who fostered you by taking over their home and lands and ordering an eight-year-old and a four-year-old hunted down like animals and killed really does not earn you points with me) and Lord Frey (he turned his daughter's wedding Catelyn Stark's brother into a massacre because Catelyn's son Robb broke his promise to marry one of Frey's female relatives. Geez, overreaction much?).
14. Which character I am most like: No clue.
15. My deep, dark fandom secret: I never get any of the subtle clues Martin drops. Never. The whole bit about Jon possibly not being Ned's son? Totally did not get that. Alleras/Sarella debate? Didn't even notice this. Every clue about things that might be secretly going on, I have to pick up in forums, because I don't see them when I read the books.
shiplizard asked me about Discworld as a third fandom, but I answered questions about that here, and my answers haven't changed since. So I'll pick my oldest fandom--the one I started loving when I was about seven.
STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES
01. The first character I fell in love with: Spock. No question about it. Extremely bright but an alien even within his own society...yeah, I identified with this just a little.
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Uhura.
I don't know if I can explain what a huge deal Uhura was to a little girl circa 1968-1969. I lived in a very white suburb, went to a school that was mostly white and had parents who freely admitted being terrified of blacks. My main exposure to blacks was through television news. I saw a great many protests showing black people shouting, fleeing from police, being gassed in riots, and so on. My impression was that black people were very angry and that almost everyone was angry back at them, but I had no idea why.
And I remember seeing Martin Luther King's funeral--or bits of it--on television the previous spring. I recall a couple of black kids at school yelling at me when MLK was assassinated, "You killed our King!" Which confused the life out of me, as I hadn't known that King even existed. I remember spending a lot of time trying to figure out where the kingdom of the blacks was in America (I figured it was a separate area, like the Indian reservations) and wondering who was in charge now that the king was dead.
Enter Uhura, who managed to counteract most of what I was seeing on TV and hearing from my parents just by existing.
Uhura showed me that a black woman could exist in a world of science and technology and completely belong there. That a black woman could be intelligent and capable and brave and artistically gifted, and that no one would think this was in any way unusual. That she could not only be part of the crew but part of the bridge crew, which my seven-year-old self interpreted as being in the line of command. That she could be respected by her captain and fellow crew members. That she could be treated no different from anyone else because, in the eyes of her shipmates, she was no different from anyone else. That a dark-skinned black woman could be unmistakeably beautiful.
I can hear people who were raised twenty to forty years later saying, "Well, of course!" But there was no "of course" about any of this in 1969. Uhura was a revolution. The communications officer taught me a great deal. Most of all, she showed me that my family's ingrained racism was, to use Mr. Spock's favorite word, "illogical."
Thank you, Nichelle Nichols.
03. The character everyone else loves that I don't: T'Pring, I think. I never understood why she didn't try telling someone that she didn't want to marry Spock, find a way of blocking the mental link, refuse to show up at the pon farr ceremony...you know, something simpler than manipulating Spock into a position where he was all but certain to kill his best friend.
04. The character I love that everyone else hates: Christine Chapel. I disliked her initially, probably because the writers rarely had her doing anything except mooning over Spock, and that got old pretty fast. But she did appear in a few episodes where she actually got to do something, and the woman I glimpsed at those times was a lot stronger and more capable--and had gone through a lot more emotional hell--than the usual run of scripts delved into. I regret that, like Uhura, Chapel rarely got the opportunity to showcase her character's skills and strengths, because I think that if we'd seen that regularly, it would have been amazing.
05. The character I used to love but don't any longer: No one. I still love 'em all.
06. The character I would shag anytime: This is a tough one. I wouldn't do Kirk, because you know exactly who he's been with--EVERYONE. Spock didn't seem to have much of a sex drive until he was in pon farr which, given the intensity of the emotions involved, probably would have been pretty violent. If I have to choose, I guess I'd go with McCoy--he could be intelligent and funny and gentlemanly all at the same time.
07. The character I want to be like: All of the regulars have qualities I'd like to emulate. But I'd like to have Kirk's leadership qualities, Spock's logic, Scotty's knack with machines (which I will never possess, alas; machines don't like me), Uhura's humor, singing voice and grace under pressure, and Chapel's ability to bluff and stand tough when she needed to.
08. The character I'd slap: Harcourt Fenton Mudd. I know he's not a regular, but the interstellar con man is definitely slapworthy.
09. A pairing that I love: Kirk/Edith Keeler. This one still breaks my heart. And whether Edith lived or died, there could be no happy ending.
10. A pairing that I hate: I'm probably the least shippy person in the universe, so this is tough. But I have to admit that while I don't hate it, I've never understood the Spock/McCoy pairing. I have no problem with them as friends, but I can't see them as a couple.
11. Favorite character: Spock. Not even a question.
12. My five favorite characters: Spock; Kirk; Uhura; McCoy; Amanda Grayson. (I will never, ever forgive Star Trek Reboot for fridging Amanda. That was all kinds of wrong.)
13. My five least favorite characters: In no particular order:
The lights of Zetar (blinking, flashing lights are seizure-inducing, as well as hurting my head and my eyes);
Hengist (well, the version possessed by the homicidal entity Redjac; he was probably my first fictional exposure to the concept of a serial killer, even though the term didn't exist at the time);
Dr. Tristan Adams, director of the Tantalus Penal Colony (he messed with people's minds, wiping their memories, implanting false ones and conditionaing people to think and do as he said, all by means of an alien device);
John Gill (a cultural observer and historian who deliberately reshaped a fragmented society into the most efficient one he could think of, Nazi Germany; why he thought this was a good idea, I'll never know); and
Landru (the mind-controlling computer in "Return of the Archons").
14. Which character I am most like: I was a lot like Spock when I was younger. Now...I don't know.
15. My deep, dark fandom secret: I never heard of the Kirk/Spock pairing until I was in college and reading the book Star Trek Lives! I had read fanfic by then (most of it published in fanzines), but it was either gen or very mild het.
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