Five question response for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dragonessasmith
May. 14th, 2007 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perpetual_motionI've got another helping coming courtesy of leaper182 in just a bit.
1. How did you get into Top Gear?
I hang out with a lot of dudes, and one of them is a car hound. We were doing absolutely nothing one night [except drinking], and we couldn’t decide what to watch. He swore up and down that I had to see this “car show”. I kept trying to tell him no, but he finally threw out “it’s British”, and I was all for it. [Let’s be honest, the Brits do informational shows better somehow.] So there I sat, two drinks in, laughing my ass off, because the first episode he showed me was the Winter Olympics special. After that, it was the end of my viewing experience as I knew it, and I started bitching about cars [seriously, have you seen the front end of the latest Yaris? Looks like they shaved off six inches because they got bored or something.]
2. What's your favorite CJ fic you've written?
Okay, I’m doing this by pairing, as it’s the only way I can pick just one.
Bug/Nigel: Finding [He’s not a good Indian boy, as much as he’d like to be.]. There’s a lot of shmoop right at the end, but it sticks with me because I like the attempt I made at digging into Bug not as a man attracted to another man but as an Indian man, with a culture very much bent towards marriage and family, falling in love with another man.
Woody/Nigel: Contents Under Pressure [“Woodrow,” his voice was perfectly polite, “you seem to have lost your eyebrows.”]. Being in a relationship with a cop is hard work. I’ve seen my parents do the “Dad nearly exploded dance” a few times, and it’s always struck me as something that doesn’t make it into fiction in general, and cop-slash pretty much at all. Divorces or break-up for cops tend to blamed on obsession over a case or overwork, whereas in real life, it tends to be the day-to-day stress of knowing your loved one could go boom at any time. I wrote this because I wanted it out there for understanding. It’s not all near-misses and hot sex. There’s tension and fear and no small amount of anger when you know the person you’re with really, really loves their job. And that got a bit wordy.
Woody/Bug: The Science of Wisconsin Boys [Woody explains his people to Bug.]. I think this is one of my best post-episode fics. It’s set after “All the News that’s Fit to Print” [also known as the episode where Woody stripped to the waist in front of Bug]. I put my concentration on the constant references to Nigel and Bug’s general insecurity. I like it because it’s very honest about relationships. There’s insecurity and stupid little things said back and forth, and while it means nothing to one person, it could mean everything to the other.
I don’t have anything in the “Other” list that really shines out, so feel free to pick your own.
3. What's the longest you've stayed up without sleeping?
I think it was around 40 hours or so. I’m a bit of an insomniac, and while that usually means I just can’t fall asleep for a while, occasionally it means I just can’t sleep period. I wish I had a funny hallucination story for you, but nothing really interesting happens, although really terrible movies are hysterically funny around hour 35.
4. Deserted island. You get one (fictional) person. Who?
Leah Price from The Poisonwood Bible [by Barbara Kingsolver]. She’s lived in Africa for decades. She’d be the person to see about getting by with next to nothing, and she’d be great for long, rambling discussions on any number of topics, although we’d probably land on political discussions of the Congo quite often. I could learn a lot.
5. Deserted island. You get one (real) person (that you don't know in real life). Who?
James May. He strikes me as a very even-tempered type of person who, after a general bit of bitchery about lack of cars on said deserted island, would find a way to wrangle a radio out of a couple of coconuts. As he was working on his fabulous contraption, I could make a signal flag out of one of his many striped jumpers and ask him about flying and what obscure books he’d been reading before we found ourselves on the island. Then I’d ferment some coconut juice so that he’d recite poetry.
leaper182 in just a bit.1. How did you get into Top Gear?
I hang out with a lot of dudes, and one of them is a car hound. We were doing absolutely nothing one night [except drinking], and we couldn’t decide what to watch. He swore up and down that I had to see this “car show”. I kept trying to tell him no, but he finally threw out “it’s British”, and I was all for it. [Let’s be honest, the Brits do informational shows better somehow.] So there I sat, two drinks in, laughing my ass off, because the first episode he showed me was the Winter Olympics special. After that, it was the end of my viewing experience as I knew it, and I started bitching about cars [seriously, have you seen the front end of the latest Yaris? Looks like they shaved off six inches because they got bored or something.]
2. What's your favorite CJ fic you've written?
Okay, I’m doing this by pairing, as it’s the only way I can pick just one.
Bug/Nigel: Finding [He’s not a good Indian boy, as much as he’d like to be.]. There’s a lot of shmoop right at the end, but it sticks with me because I like the attempt I made at digging into Bug not as a man attracted to another man but as an Indian man, with a culture very much bent towards marriage and family, falling in love with another man.
Woody/Nigel: Contents Under Pressure [“Woodrow,” his voice was perfectly polite, “you seem to have lost your eyebrows.”]. Being in a relationship with a cop is hard work. I’ve seen my parents do the “Dad nearly exploded dance” a few times, and it’s always struck me as something that doesn’t make it into fiction in general, and cop-slash pretty much at all. Divorces or break-up for cops tend to blamed on obsession over a case or overwork, whereas in real life, it tends to be the day-to-day stress of knowing your loved one could go boom at any time. I wrote this because I wanted it out there for understanding. It’s not all near-misses and hot sex. There’s tension and fear and no small amount of anger when you know the person you’re with really, really loves their job. And that got a bit wordy.
Woody/Bug: The Science of Wisconsin Boys [Woody explains his people to Bug.]. I think this is one of my best post-episode fics. It’s set after “All the News that’s Fit to Print” [also known as the episode where Woody stripped to the waist in front of Bug]. I put my concentration on the constant references to Nigel and Bug’s general insecurity. I like it because it’s very honest about relationships. There’s insecurity and stupid little things said back and forth, and while it means nothing to one person, it could mean everything to the other.
I don’t have anything in the “Other” list that really shines out, so feel free to pick your own.
3. What's the longest you've stayed up without sleeping?
I think it was around 40 hours or so. I’m a bit of an insomniac, and while that usually means I just can’t fall asleep for a while, occasionally it means I just can’t sleep period. I wish I had a funny hallucination story for you, but nothing really interesting happens, although really terrible movies are hysterically funny around hour 35.
4. Deserted island. You get one (fictional) person. Who?
Leah Price from The Poisonwood Bible [by Barbara Kingsolver]. She’s lived in Africa for decades. She’d be the person to see about getting by with next to nothing, and she’d be great for long, rambling discussions on any number of topics, although we’d probably land on political discussions of the Congo quite often. I could learn a lot.
5. Deserted island. You get one (real) person (that you don't know in real life). Who?
James May. He strikes me as a very even-tempered type of person who, after a general bit of bitchery about lack of cars on said deserted island, would find a way to wrangle a radio out of a couple of coconuts. As he was working on his fabulous contraption, I could make a signal flag out of one of his many striped jumpers and ask him about flying and what obscure books he’d been reading before we found ourselves on the island. Then I’d ferment some coconut juice so that he’d recite poetry.
