Five questions meme
Dec. 12th, 2024 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lokifanThe five questions meme! If you would like questions, say "Jacobins!"
I've got some great questions fromsabethea and oursin
sabethea asked:
1. Which job that you’ve had is your favourite?
I really enjoyed working for King’s College London this summer. Lovely students, lovely colleagues. It was hard work but not unmanageably so, and I got good feedback which I definitely needed at that moment. Hopefully I can do it again next year.
2. If you could go back and change one thing in your life (and it wouldn’t have knock on effects that would change good things that have happened since), what would you change?
Definitely an earlier ADHD diagnosis, because I hope it would’ve got me the support I needed at uni. Not making the most of the chance I had to spend three years learning as much as I could (or at least wanted to) and engaging with stuff I genuinely found interesting is my biggest regret.
3. When you think of yourself in 10 years time, what do you imagine your future looking like?
Ooh. Very hard to say. I’d like to be in a relationship, but I think being single is more likely than not - I’m kinda scared of dating. Probably still in London? Enjoying being an auntie to my friends’ kids, and I suspect a couple of niblings too by then. Hopefully still living with K, my BFF, and perhaps aging comfortably into queer-elder-ness. I’ll be 44, which is too young for being an elder, but we know what the queer community is like. And I’ll take it, tbh, because I don’t wanna roll my eyes at the Youf too much but I feel like I’d have fewer awkward moments in queer spaces if people looked at me and saw an Old. Like, I grew up under Section 28 and there are already real differences between formative experiences and assumptions for me vs the people 10-15 years younger.
4. What’s the best thing about your present?
Good housing situation, I think. Living with my BFF has turned out to be really lovely - fun, chill, homey. The two of us have had two different awful Housemate #3s, and the current one is a total sweetie who also has two darling black cats! One of whom is lying next to me right now.
5. What do you like best about yourself?
Hmm. I read a lot and I’m curious about things. I’m frustrated with myself for not creating more, especially during this period of unemployment, but I do like that I read a lot of long-form journalism and pay attention to the world.
oursin asked:
1. Do you have a favourite, perhaps little-known, bit of London?
Haha my favourite bits are all extremely well-known, I think. I love Southbank - great food markets, a great bookshop, fantastic for wandering round and people-watching and the view of the Thames. The Southbank Centre lets you bring in your own food and eat on their balcony for free. I like Brutalism, and I love the National Theatre even though when I see anything there I always have to give myself an extra fifteen minutes to get lost.
2. All considerations of expense, environmental impact, put aside, what is your ideal mode of transport?
By horse! I loved riding as a kid.
3. If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
Birch? Ash? Something English and vaguely witchy.
4. Your all-time, transhistorical dinner party guests?
Ahhh! Um. Okay.
Diana Wynne Jones, one of my favourite writers of all time. Frances Hardringe, who I suspect would like to meet her. Janelle Monae. M R James, C L R James, and my dad, who wouldn’t want to miss the cricket talk. So then my mum and someone she’d wanna meet - probably either the Virgin Mary or Joni Mitchell.
5. Can we tell the dancer from the dance, and if so, how?
Kind of; by looking at the other dances by the same dancer.
I've got some great questions from
sabethea and oursin sabethea asked:1. Which job that you’ve had is your favourite?
I really enjoyed working for King’s College London this summer. Lovely students, lovely colleagues. It was hard work but not unmanageably so, and I got good feedback which I definitely needed at that moment. Hopefully I can do it again next year.
2. If you could go back and change one thing in your life (and it wouldn’t have knock on effects that would change good things that have happened since), what would you change?
Definitely an earlier ADHD diagnosis, because I hope it would’ve got me the support I needed at uni. Not making the most of the chance I had to spend three years learning as much as I could (or at least wanted to) and engaging with stuff I genuinely found interesting is my biggest regret.
3. When you think of yourself in 10 years time, what do you imagine your future looking like?
Ooh. Very hard to say. I’d like to be in a relationship, but I think being single is more likely than not - I’m kinda scared of dating. Probably still in London? Enjoying being an auntie to my friends’ kids, and I suspect a couple of niblings too by then. Hopefully still living with K, my BFF, and perhaps aging comfortably into queer-elder-ness. I’ll be 44, which is too young for being an elder, but we know what the queer community is like. And I’ll take it, tbh, because I don’t wanna roll my eyes at the Youf too much but I feel like I’d have fewer awkward moments in queer spaces if people looked at me and saw an Old. Like, I grew up under Section 28 and there are already real differences between formative experiences and assumptions for me vs the people 10-15 years younger.
4. What’s the best thing about your present?
Good housing situation, I think. Living with my BFF has turned out to be really lovely - fun, chill, homey. The two of us have had two different awful Housemate #3s, and the current one is a total sweetie who also has two darling black cats! One of whom is lying next to me right now.
5. What do you like best about yourself?
Hmm. I read a lot and I’m curious about things. I’m frustrated with myself for not creating more, especially during this period of unemployment, but I do like that I read a lot of long-form journalism and pay attention to the world.
oursin asked:1. Do you have a favourite, perhaps little-known, bit of London?
Haha my favourite bits are all extremely well-known, I think. I love Southbank - great food markets, a great bookshop, fantastic for wandering round and people-watching and the view of the Thames. The Southbank Centre lets you bring in your own food and eat on their balcony for free. I like Brutalism, and I love the National Theatre even though when I see anything there I always have to give myself an extra fifteen minutes to get lost.
2. All considerations of expense, environmental impact, put aside, what is your ideal mode of transport?
By horse! I loved riding as a kid.
3. If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
Birch? Ash? Something English and vaguely witchy.
4. Your all-time, transhistorical dinner party guests?
Ahhh! Um. Okay.
Diana Wynne Jones, one of my favourite writers of all time. Frances Hardringe, who I suspect would like to meet her. Janelle Monae. M R James, C L R James, and my dad, who wouldn’t want to miss the cricket talk. So then my mum and someone she’d wanna meet - probably either the Virgin Mary or Joni Mitchell.
5. Can we tell the dancer from the dance, and if so, how?
Kind of; by looking at the other dances by the same dancer.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-12 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-13 07:39 am (UTC)Plus honestly, she died while I was at uni and I wish I'd written to her a fan letter before it happened.
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Date: 2024-12-12 06:44 pm (UTC)Jacobins!
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Date: 2024-12-17 01:30 pm (UTC)1. Where would you want to go on holiday, if money was no object?
2. Favourite place you've been/holiday you've had?
3. Are there any games that've really surprised you by being a lot better or worse than you expected?
4. Favourite FFXV character? Or favourite FFXVI character if you prefer, I just like FFXV.
5. Who's your favourite Muppet and why?
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Date: 2024-12-12 09:27 pm (UTC)These are really lovely answers!
I am amused to find I'm a decade older than you are -- you come off as so much more grown and sensible than I feel I do.
I liked my 40s, fwiw, if tbh not as much as my 30s (mostly due to my warranty expiring)
I really love your proposed dinner party.
If you feel up to giving me questions I'd love some :)
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Date: 2024-12-12 10:10 pm (UTC)That is a very interesting combination
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Date: 2024-12-13 07:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-12 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-13 07:35 am (UTC)I spent most of my 20s moving regularly - I never lived anywhere longer than a year, and usually less, because landlords kept selling the places out from under me. Lived with randomers. I feel a lot more settled now, living with a BFF (who's also into interior design and has been the biggest part of making our place beautiful).
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Date: 2024-12-13 04:42 pm (UTC)I think people often don't understand the importance of having a beautiful living space. It makes such a difference.
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Date: 2024-12-13 08:56 pm (UTC)You are excellent, I feel like an elder queer at 46, especially in fandom circles, DWJ is splendid and I think reading lots is good and creating comes a lot and then not for ages…
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Date: 2024-12-17 01:39 pm (UTC)Aww, thank you! And yeah I hope for a creative surge at some point. Writing DW posts again is part of an attempt to write more in general, really, esp since I've been doing a ton of RP with a friend over the last... five years, wow... and it's faded a lot recently.
Fandom circles definitely make you feel like an elder queer, lol. I mostly really like it, because it's a sign of how much better things have been for the kids, I think. But it definitely feels weird sometimes. I really liked Grace Petrie's comedy act Butch which touched on this.
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Date: 2024-12-13 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-17 01:44 pm (UTC)2. Would you rather be friends with Darrell, Sally, or Alicia? Would it have been different at different times in your life?
3. I've heard great things about Georgette Heyer and keep meaning to read Cotillion. What would you rec for a Heyer newbie?
4. Did you grow up with cats?
5. Why did you want to move to Cornwall specifically?
Hope they're not too hard lol, I feel like "choose fave books/characters" type questions are great but tough!
no subject
Date: 2024-12-16 04:59 pm (UTC)1. Promenading along the South Bank, and seeing London change, is a top ten London experience at all times imo. :-)
5. Ooo, deep. Good answer.
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Date: 2024-12-17 01:35 pm (UTC)1. It's so good!! It's where I always try and take people if they don't know London well - London Bridge to Westminster Bridge has so many good sights. (Even though I'm bitter forever that thanks to Boris, when you go across Millennium Bridge towards St Paul's there's a hideous concrete skyscraper poking out from behind the dome even though that view's supposed to be legally protected. His worst crime!!1!1!)
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Date: 2024-12-17 01:54 pm (UTC)My favourite "new" addition is Maggie Blake's Cause but I especially enjoy the whole south shore of the river from the South Bank out into Kent. I love the variety.
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Date: 2024-12-20 12:21 pm (UTC)Yessss! That combination of old and new is one of my favourite things about London, it's a lovely part of its diversity.
I didn't know about Maggie Blake's Cause! How fantastic. I've definitely been down there, will have to tip my hat to her next time I'm there.
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Date: 2024-12-20 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-20 01:28 pm (UTC)