Five Questions

Oh, look, the five questions that poeticknowledge asked me...ages ago! It has been patiently gathering dust in some dark corner of my computer, waiting to be rediscovered.

1) How do you feel you have changed the most as a person in the past 10 years?

I think I’ve become a lot more open to new people. Admittedly I started with a super low baseline here, given that in high school I basically viewed extracurricular activities as a blood sacrifice I offered on the altar of getting into college - because I had to be around people I barely knew, the horror the horror! -

And then of course I went to college, and once I arrived realized that I had managed to land me in a place where I was literally surrounded on all sides with people I did not know, and had either to get to know them or sink like a stone. So I learned, metaphorically speaking, how to swim.

A success story: I met with one of our prospective grad students for next year this morning. I kept up a conversation for a whole forty-five minutes! We agreed that Lawrence of Arabia is awesome on the big screen.

2) What is the biggest challenge you have faced as a writer?

I am not sure how to answer this, actually. I think overall the biggest challenge has been a difficulty coming up with plots, but possibly you mean which specific project has been hardest? I’m not sure.

3) What do you feel are the most important lessons your parents taught you?

My dad likes to remind me that “intelligence is not a virtue” - meaning not that intelligence is bad, but that intelligence is, in many respects, a gift from God or the gene fairy or what have you. Virtues are things you strive for: goodness, kindness, justice. Intelligence is just a tool for creating those things, and merely being intelligent doesn’t make you morally better or spiritually superior than anyone else.

4) Describe a moment that changed your life.

I’m thinking this one, in Scarborough. I suppose “changed my life” is a rather strong way to describe it...

Alternatively, the moment I posted my first Torchwood fic on LJ, thus launching myself into LJ-land. Hello, LJ! You have been good to me.

5) Which character (from a book/movie/TV show) do you feel you can most identify with? Why?

Oh, man. You want me to pick just one? I basically collect characters who I identify with, so the answer to this sort of thing fluctuates. Phoebe from Phoebe in Wonderland, maybe, or Bindy from The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie. Because...now I want to find more functional characters to identify with...Bindy, much as I did high school, feels a deep antipathy to pretty much everyone else, never mind they're mostly harmless. I still feel that the ending of that book is a cop-out.

Castle season finale

Castle season 4 finale!

Castle and Beckett!

Beckett and Castle!

I would say FINALLY, except that I enjoyed every minute of Castle and Beckett’s four-season-long mating dance: the sexual tension simmering on the back burner, only very occasionally surfacing as an overt will-they-won’t-they, and coming to a boil just when it began to seem like the will-they-won’t-they was going to take over the show.

It’s unusual for me to like a canon couple quite as much as I like Castle and Beckett, and I think it is because the writers were content to let the romance simmer in the background. Often canon couples’ romance seems to be entirely about their romance - as if there’s nothing to their feelings for each other except the will-they-won’t-they - and while Castle and Beckett’s feelings for each other color all their interactions, of course

Castle loves Beckett for being so driven and tough and stopping at nothing to close her cases, and being, above all, so brave - and I think this is one of the reasons he’s so disappointed that she doesn’t acknowledge that he told her he loved her; because that refusal seems cowardly, and her bravery is one of the things he loves about her.

And Beckett loves Castle for being outwardly goofy and helping her loosen up, but inwardly - though he hides it well, so she doesn’t realize for a while - just as serious and driven as she is.

Anyway. I’m hoping that next season writers pick up Castle and Beckett’s disagreement from this episode again, because while it’s nice that Castle and Beckett have finally admitted they love each other, they still have some really awkward conversations that they need to get through. Chief among them - Beckett clearly won’t (and, in a sense, can’t) stop looking for the conspiracy that killed her mother, and Castle equally can’t stand to watch her put herself in harm’s way.

I’m thinking Castle is going to have to be the one to budge, both because Beckett is clearly immovable and because chasing the conspiracy clearly has more plot potential than hiding. Which means there will probably be more conspiracy episodes next season, sadface.

***

However, the next season won’t be out on DVD for a while, so I’m looking for something new to watch. I am thinking - The Borgias! Because Italy! And also the History Channel’s new Vikings series looks Relevant to My Interests, because almost canonical OT3!, (sineala linked these photos that is apparently the canon dialogue, OMG) - but I have also heard it is really boring, and that is kind of a dealbreaker, never mind the OT3.

People are forever telling me “You should watch X! It gets good after season Y!” My favorite for this is Buffy. No one agrees which season it gets good after after; I’ve heard all the way up to season 3. As if I’m going to waste 72 hours of my life watching a show on the assurance that eventually I’ll actually enjoy it. No, thank you, I expect my television to entertain me every episode.

I should probably give Bomb Girls one more episode to prove that it is up to the task...