Who am I? Are you sure you want to know? I'm Mara Trinity Scully
1) Red pill or blue pill? I say RED for me for the pure selfish reason that I want to be a bad ass fighter without taking the time to take a kung fu class. I want it all downloaded in my brain and to be the best fighter on my ship. I want the look, I want the motivation, I want the job of a resistance fighter. I want to die valiantly in battle with an agent and/or saving a fellow fighter's life. And if I had my way, I’d get on the Neb so I could work with The One and his lady--not because they are the greatest characters and gorgeous people but if I'm gonna be a resistance fighter, I want to work with the *best*. I'll take orders, I’ll sleep in the little cabin, I'll deal with the trials of Zion, I'll deal with the cold and the pain and the goop. I would prefer the way of the warrior to the way of the queen of the liberal arts that I am.
2) Hobbies? Searching in literature and film for more empowered women to add to my slowly growing list; singing in my very low alto voice anything from Bach to Default; acting in anything you’ll cast me in; writing non-fiction analyses and fanfiction about my fandoms; discussing the hilarity of all 80’s fantasy films; reading and watching costume dramas from Wilde to Jane Austen to Shakespeare; defending and challenging Freud’s theories to anyone who will listen; and daydreaming.
3) 1st skill you'd upload after unplugging? How to play the piano like a master and an excellent repertoire of Rachmaninov, Mozart and Chopin. I am crazy for the piano and I really wish that I had the talent to play the masterpieces myself.
4) Your favourite movies and what they say about you? After The Matrix: Lord of the Rings owns a great deal of my allegiance. I have always been a fantasy-junkie and LOTR blew me away as the granddaddy of every drop of fantasy literature and film after Tolkien’s publication. Plus, it has some AWESOME female characters. Don’t let anyone convince you that Tolkien was a misogynist. And Peter Jackson must honestly love me for beefing up Arwen and Eowyn’s characters in the films. Wowzah. (And for your information I AM NOT A LEGOLAS FAN. *raspberry*. Give me Aragorn anyday.) Next, we have my tie between X-Files and Star Wars. Sadly, their newest stuff has been LESS than extraordinary, though. Scully used to kick ass, and Amidala’s daughter, Leia, could kick her mom’s ass in a heartbeat. But we can always remember, and rewatch, the golden age of each fandom and find much joy. And oh my HEAVENS, I just love Spiderman. Total guilty pleasure. I ADORE that film. Away from the scifi/fantasy stuff, I really adore Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night to the point of distraction. I speak Shakespeare as a second language so I love all Shakes-on-film, but Twelfth Night is the best adaptation, I must say. My newest favorite costume drama is a little known piece called Impromptu with Hugh Grant and Judy Davis. Talk about the top three favorite things I love: empowered women, piano music, and a terribly beautiful love story.
5) Which Powerpuff Girl are you? Blossom. I look great in pink.
6) Lyrics to your own personal theme song? Totally cheating. I didn’t write these lyrics but this is my personal theme song, Heute ist mein Tag by Blumchen (German trance! YEAH!)
Ich fühl mich gut. Und mach mein Herz auf. Lass die Sonne rein. Jeder Tag soll ein Geschenk. Und was besondres sein.Ich steh´ auf. Schau´ aus dem Fenster. In ein Himmelblau. Vertrieben sind die Nachtgespenster. Und ich weiß genau.
Heute ist mein Tag. Heute ist mein Tag. Heute ist mein Tag.
Ich schau´ in den Spiegel. Zieh´ mir was Besond´res an. Es ist nicht zu glauben. Dass man so gut ausseh´n kann! Ich tanz´ auf der Strasse. ach´ den Menschen ins Gesicht. Alle denken ich bin verrückt. Denn sie wissen nicht:
Heute ist mein Tag. Heute ist mein Tag. Heute ist mein Tag.
7) What is the opening line of your favourite book? "In the Beginning was nature." -- Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia (non-fiction, gender and literature/art theory)
8) If you were trapped on a desert island, what 10 or 15 CDs would you want to have with you?
(1) A CD with all of the music from Moulin Rouge!
(2) Lord of the Rings, by Howard Shore
(3) The Truth and the Light: Music from The X-Files, by Mark Snow
(4) Eden, performed by Sarah Brightman
(5) Chicago: The Musical, by Kander and Ebb
(6) Walking Wounded, performed by Everything But the Girl
(7) CD 2 of Vladimir Ashkenazy’s Favorite Rachmaninov which includes Concerto #3 and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
(8) The soundtrack from the film Amadeus
(9) Love Sensuality Devotion, performed by Enigma
(10) a mix of Blumchen, Moby, a variety of trance favorites, Madonna, and Massive Attack.
9) My least favourite line in "The Matrix" is?"I know Kung Fu." Made for some fun on SNL, but in the film, I JUST DON’T LIKE IT!
10) What is the truth? You can't handle the truth.
11) Did you a) write the book, b) read the book, c) read the Cliff Notes, or d) produce the movie based on the book? None of the above. I wrote a huge paper discussing the gender issues in the book and how the film portrayed them differently.
12) Who would YOU spar with in the Construct dojo? Neo and Trinity together. And get my ass totally kicked. But damn, wouldn’t that be FUN?!
13) Second favorite heroine? Hard hard hard decision. The tie I have to break is between X-Files’ Scully, Star Wars’ Leia and Mara Jade, and Lord of the Rings’ Eowyn. But I guess I have to choose (ex-) Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, MD, if we all can ignore how much she cried in the last two seasons. After Trinity, Scully is my ultimate role model as a woman who can exist in so many worlds that are dominated by men and end up becoming the GODDESS that EVERYONE loved and worshiped. From starting out as someone who had to walk a step behind Mulder in the first season, she rose to become one of the most influential female characters in science fiction--which is why it was so out of character for her to weep through season 9 and not even handle a gun in the finale. Jeez. In the perfect world, they'll make up for it by having the first shot of the next XFiles film be her shooting someone. (bloodthirsty, aren't I)
14) Favorite idea you have created in your Matrix fanfiction universe? Getting rid of the Trinity-pregnant cliché by making her barren in “Variations on a Theme.” I think it’s ridiculous that the machines would make perfect humans in the pods and they would DEFINITELY not spend a great deal of time on the reproductive system since it’s completely irrelevant in the Real World. So, goshdarnit, Trinity has no ovum and Neo has no fertile sperm. It would be nice for them to have a baby, yeah, but let that happen in someone else’s fanfic world.
15) List some of the music that inspires you to write. Piano Concerto #3 by Sergei Rachmanioff, i.e. the best piece of music on earth; everything by Engima; The Lord of the Rings soundtrack is a constant inspiration for my creative juices, I always listen to it while writing papers; Dissolved Girl by Massive Attack; Glory Box by Portishead; anything by Everything But the Girl; The Delirium Silence remix.
16) Tell about your first experience seeing The Matrix and when it hit you that this was film that would CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER!!! My first meeting with the Matrix was the summer of 2000. My dad and I were flipping channels and I stopped to see Keanu Reeves in this green kitchen talking to this old black lady. And my dad said, "oh this is a really good movie" and I’m like...whatever. I was a big Keanu-Reeves-Sucks!!!! person at that point in time. (Remember I'm a Shakes-on-film person, and he was the one resounding OUCH spot in Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing). Plus, I couldn’t take the angst of the scene. Obviously Keanu wanted the black lady to tell him that he was the One, whatever that meant. So I lost interest and moved on. However, later, I started to figure out that that movie was the one that all my guy friend were recommending to me and I regretted my apathy. So, a few months later, I was in a hotel room in Washington DC with my parents and flipping channels and came across Keanu asleep in front of a computer and decided that this was a good time to finally see this darn film. After the first few scenes, I was hooked. And I had the most KICK ass dream about it after finishing it--that dream sequence will appear in my big mind-meld fic that I’m writing. After that, I was a woman OBSESSED with the film. I was hungry for every bit of information about the film I could get. I even started to like Keanu Reeves (*sigh*). Once I finally got my hands on the VHS, I watched it over and over again, like if I was two and it was Dumbo. I couldn’t get enough of the Matrix. And I still can’t. : )