Meme Thursday, Part II: Er, Meme Friday
Got more questions from nazkey . Here are more answers. :)
Here goes: Comment with "Come at me, bro!"
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
1. Tell me more about Janeway and why you love her so much.
I am many, many years removed from my fervor, but I did find this (Thanks, archive.org! AOL took all my Voyager squee down years ago. I moved my Voyager fic to Dreamwidth, but not this piece.), written about the handling of female characters on Voyager at the peak of my Janeway love in 1997. A friend of mine wanted me to write a reasoned explanation of why I loved Voyager so very much. Janeway, excerpted:
As a woman of the 24th century, Captain Kathryn Janeway, of the Federation Starship Voyager, makes her own rules. She has no other choice, since her vessel is, as of early in season four, some 65 years travel from Federation space.... Having no one to answer to but also no known allies for the enormous journey through an essentially hostile, unknown quadrant created a situation requiring a leader undaunted by the odds against her. Enter Captain Janeway. An easy mistake to make in writing for a leader with so much stacked against her would be to attempt to perfect her character, leaving her battles external. Voyager’s writers, however, have at times gone out of their way to show the flaws in Janeway’s character. She has made nearly irreparable mistakes, almost lost the ship on many an occasion, gone against the advice of her senior staff, and they have barely eluded death under her command, generally because of her blind devotion to fulfilling her promise of bringing them all home. And yet this character is rich, layered, and more importantly, believable. Only as a sidebar does her gender play a part in her characterization, and when it does, the chance is offered to learn about the female psyche through a woman who feels she must set herself apart from her crew, struggling to maintain protocol in a circumstance that is far from the world of the Federation for which it was designed.
Basically, I loved that she made bad choices. I loved watching her struggle to keep her personal wants and needs out of the picture (often failing, but never where her feelings for her First Officer were concerned). I loved that she could mother them without seeming (to me) weak. I loved the episode where she tortured herself in an alien isolation tank, expecting trials to reach enlightenment, and that the upshot was that she put all her faith blindly in science, to the point that it ended up her religion- she didn't need proof that science would save the day, it just would. (I guess this is really RDM's legacy, since he seems to make everything he touches about weird religion.)
2. What is your favorite musical of all time and why?
Interesting... Hmm... I'm having a hard time narrowing it down. Little Shop of Horrors, Grease, Beauty & the Beast, Jesus Christ Superstar, Phantom... If I must pick one, I'll go with Little Shop. Why? It's funny and serious and about the bad choices people make when they want things or think they need things.
3. Do you believe in past lives? If yes, who were you before you were you in the now?
I do not disbelieve, but I have never really had the feeling that I lived in another time or place. I've always been too caught up pretending to be someone else NOW to ever really put much thought in BEFORE. :)
4. What is your fondest childhood memory?
In 1989, the week I turned 16, we took my maternal grandparents with us to Disney World. We hadn't been since I was 4, and we were going to be there for my birthday, so there was that. My grandfather, with whom we had always been very close, was in the end stages of Emphysema, and for as long as I could remember had at least some difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. We talked him into using a wheelchair so he could see all of the World. We'd traveled with them quite a bit over the years, and this was the last and biggest trip I ever got to take with my grandfather. He rode almost all the rides (and the wheelchair got us pulled to the head of almost every line, which was pretty sweet), and I just remember trying so hard to enjoy and remember all of it, since I knew he wasn't likely to take many more trips. He passed away a little more than 2 years later. The smell of Old Spice still makes me think of how his scritchy red beard felt on my cheek when I kissed him.
5. What's your ideal vacation?
There is quiet, water, sunshine and shade, nature to explore, and company that I can also get away from when I want time to think. I think a cabin by a mountain lake, with enough amenities to not make things too much work, but enough missing that I can relax and think and write.
Here goes: Comment with "Come at me, bro!"
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
1. Tell me more about Janeway and why you love her so much.
I am many, many years removed from my fervor, but I did find this (Thanks, archive.org! AOL took all my Voyager squee down years ago. I moved my Voyager fic to Dreamwidth, but not this piece.), written about the handling of female characters on Voyager at the peak of my Janeway love in 1997. A friend of mine wanted me to write a reasoned explanation of why I loved Voyager so very much. Janeway, excerpted:
As a woman of the 24th century, Captain Kathryn Janeway, of the Federation Starship Voyager, makes her own rules. She has no other choice, since her vessel is, as of early in season four, some 65 years travel from Federation space.... Having no one to answer to but also no known allies for the enormous journey through an essentially hostile, unknown quadrant created a situation requiring a leader undaunted by the odds against her. Enter Captain Janeway. An easy mistake to make in writing for a leader with so much stacked against her would be to attempt to perfect her character, leaving her battles external. Voyager’s writers, however, have at times gone out of their way to show the flaws in Janeway’s character. She has made nearly irreparable mistakes, almost lost the ship on many an occasion, gone against the advice of her senior staff, and they have barely eluded death under her command, generally because of her blind devotion to fulfilling her promise of bringing them all home. And yet this character is rich, layered, and more importantly, believable. Only as a sidebar does her gender play a part in her characterization, and when it does, the chance is offered to learn about the female psyche through a woman who feels she must set herself apart from her crew, struggling to maintain protocol in a circumstance that is far from the world of the Federation for which it was designed.
Basically, I loved that she made bad choices. I loved watching her struggle to keep her personal wants and needs out of the picture (often failing, but never where her feelings for her First Officer were concerned). I loved that she could mother them without seeming (to me) weak. I loved the episode where she tortured herself in an alien isolation tank, expecting trials to reach enlightenment, and that the upshot was that she put all her faith blindly in science, to the point that it ended up her religion- she didn't need proof that science would save the day, it just would. (I guess this is really RDM's legacy, since he seems to make everything he touches about weird religion.)
2. What is your favorite musical of all time and why?
Interesting... Hmm... I'm having a hard time narrowing it down. Little Shop of Horrors, Grease, Beauty & the Beast, Jesus Christ Superstar, Phantom... If I must pick one, I'll go with Little Shop. Why? It's funny and serious and about the bad choices people make when they want things or think they need things.
3. Do you believe in past lives? If yes, who were you before you were you in the now?
I do not disbelieve, but I have never really had the feeling that I lived in another time or place. I've always been too caught up pretending to be someone else NOW to ever really put much thought in BEFORE. :)
4. What is your fondest childhood memory?
In 1989, the week I turned 16, we took my maternal grandparents with us to Disney World. We hadn't been since I was 4, and we were going to be there for my birthday, so there was that. My grandfather, with whom we had always been very close, was in the end stages of Emphysema, and for as long as I could remember had at least some difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. We talked him into using a wheelchair so he could see all of the World. We'd traveled with them quite a bit over the years, and this was the last and biggest trip I ever got to take with my grandfather. He rode almost all the rides (and the wheelchair got us pulled to the head of almost every line, which was pretty sweet), and I just remember trying so hard to enjoy and remember all of it, since I knew he wasn't likely to take many more trips. He passed away a little more than 2 years later. The smell of Old Spice still makes me think of how his scritchy red beard felt on my cheek when I kissed him.
5. What's your ideal vacation?
There is quiet, water, sunshine and shade, nature to explore, and company that I can also get away from when I want time to think. I think a cabin by a mountain lake, with enough amenities to not make things too much work, but enough missing that I can relax and think and write.