morgan_dhu | The WOF Meme (Reply)

Edit: For those who do not know, WOF stands for Women on Fire, which is the name of a series of very good and highly recommended (by me, at least) fantasy novels (five books to date, including a prequel) written by the amazingly multi-talented

plaidder. Information about the books, and the means of obtaining them (since the evil genre publishing world has not seen fit to print them) is available here.

These novels are set in a universe in which there are, well, beings who involve themselves to a greater or lesser extent in what people do. Two such beings are known as Idair and The Dark One. Both are able to invest people with paranormal abilities. Those invested by Idair are bright, those invested by the Dark One are, not surprisingly, dark. Both beings require their followers to adhere to certain rules of behaviour, or forfeit their special abilities. One of the things that Idair's followers cannot do and retain their allegence is lie. The Dark One's followers can lie whenever they choose but they cannot tell anyone that they love them.

plaidder wrote:

One of those LJ-memes is going round about where you ask someone 5 questions, and they answer them in their LJ, and then people can leave comments in that person's LJ asking to be 'interviewed,' and on it goes.

I was pondering the niceties of netiquette in relation to this (how personal can you make the question without causing the interviewee grief?) and I came up with the following WOF-specific variation:

1. Decide whether you are bright or dark.

2. Post a comment asking to be interviewed.

3. I ask you 3 questions. You post the answers in your own journal, along with these instructions.

4. If you are dark, you must answer all 3, but you can lie as much as you want.

5. If you are bright, you must truthfully answer any ordinary or vexed questions (to the best of your ability). You are allowed to evade difficult questions but you must do it without saying anything that is not literally true or point-blank refusing to answer. You can refuse to answer dangerous questions. You are also allowed to give answers that are true but do not tell the whole truth.*

6. Based on your answers, everyone gets to guess your alignment.

7. You then pose 3 questions to the first person to correctly guess your alignment, and the cycle of memeage begins anew.

*For the purposes of this meme: a vexed question involves some sort of Great Unknown; a difficult question involves something you personally don't feel like divulging information about because it would be embarrassing; a dangerous question involves something that would potentially cause real harm to yourself or another person if you revealed it. Anything that is not vexed, difficult, or dangerous is considered an ordinary question.

plaidder's questions (and my answers):

1. Do you like your body?

I like my body, but that is not the only emotional response that I have to my body. I like my body for being the vehicle through/in/as which I live here and now, for giving me touch and sound and sight and taste, and sometimes smell, for all the physical acts and experiences I have known through its interface with the rest of the physical world, for the things I can do in interaction with other physicalities, living and not-living.

2. Do you actually call Glaurung Glaurung, or do you use his name?

When I refer to my partner online, I call him Glaurung in those fora where that is how he is known. When I speak or write of him to other people who know his name, I usually use that name. When I call him or speak to him, I rarely use Glaurung and sometimes use his name, but usually call him my dragon or my beloved.

3. If you could eliminate one very common noxious chemical from your enviornment, what would it be?

There is a chemical - or perhaps a family of related chemicals, although I do not know its/their name(s) - which is used specifically in many products with artificial scents to cause the actual molecules of artificial scent to adhere more strongly to the surfaces of objects. It is the chemical that makes your laundry smell "extra fresh, extra long," that makes the smell of the perfume and scented shampoo and soap and deoderant and skin lotion and makeup that you put on your body cling to your hair, skin, your clothes, and everything you touch until it is actively washed away. It is the chemical that makes your kitchen smell lemony-clean long after you've finished washing your dishes and countertops. It is the reason that when I buy a used book, or risk borrowing one from the library, I often have to bake it at low heat for days to drive out the perfume left there by the last reader. If scents dissipated naturally instead of clinging to everything for days, that would reduce the impact of many other different chemicals I cannot tolerate, so if I could eliminate just one common chemical, this would probably do me the most good - and do others the least inconvenience.