Five Questions Meme - First Installment, from lawless523

1. I know your favorite pairing, but who is your favorite Saiyuki character (including Gaiden)?

Gojyo, hands down. He's a very comfortable fit for me as a point-of-view character - that desperate longing to belong and be loved, the fact that he's stuck always between two worlds. And his off-handed swearing and willingness to call people (even himself) on bullshit make me smile. Also, the fact that he doesn't have a special magical talent - except to always be the last man standing, and drag the others to safety.

2. How did you get into manga to begin with?

The Mr. was looking through the SF&F section of a bookstore near his office and getting increasingly disgusted with the selection. So he glanced at the manga section next over and asked the young store clerk what he'd recommend for someone who liked fantasy. He came home that night with the first volumes of Samurai Deeper Kyo. The rest is as blogged here on LJ!

3. If money and language barriers were no object, and you could live anywhere in the world, where would you want to live?

I'm living right where I want to live, pretty much! I grew up around here, and it fits me quite well. I love the varied population, the fact that we have so many great museums and restaurants from all cultures, the fact that I can buy Shabbat candles and sushi rice at the regular grocery, that no one blinks twice if I say that I'm leaving work early Friday because of Yom Kippur. The lush softness of the landscape, loud with birds and bright with flowers and butterflies, full of glens and dells with little streams flowing through, is a part of my heart. But if money were no object, I'd fix up the house. (I like to visit other places, but this is home.)

4. What was your first fandom, and how/when/why did you get into it?

Hee, what a question! It's a tie somewhere between Star Trek: the original series and LOTR. I found Star Trek on TV (to the disgust of my very girly best friend of the time, who preferred Lost in Space), and was given LOTR by my parents. By my early teens I had all of the meta-stuff that was available for both (David Gerrold's The Making of Star Trek, for example). I attended one of the last of the big NYC Star Trek conventions when I was 16. And in college, I had a card file of Elvish vocabulary and later reconstructed proto-Elvish for my historical linguistics teacher.

5. What's a favorite quote of yours? (I'm assuming there's no one favorite and what it might be might change over time.)

For a while now, it's been the Philip Pullman quote that I used as the title of my writing LJ: "'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever."