Polls entertain me.

[mrissa]

[Poll #865706]

Elaboration in comments welcome.

Comments

[lutin.livejournal.com]

i promise an answer after i finish
reading esther's article & find the
site with cute fantasy/scifi element
names.

Elements

[aet.livejournal.com]

Refreshing poll. But hard to fill for the chemistry -challenged.

From the list you provided, I would have gone with Carbon for you, but some characteristics of Calcium felt more suitable from my point of view.

For myself I have to go with Chlorine (also, I love the cartoon that goes with Chlorine on WebElements site (http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Cl/key.html)).

Re: Elements

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Like what with calcium?

Re: Elements

[aet.livejournal.com]

Being essential in both in living things and limestone. Existing in interaction and as firmly part of something ...

It may be, of course, that being part of stalagmites and stalactites as calcium carbonate was the image that charmed me and now I am just fibbing to get the other parts of image suitably right.

Re: Elements

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Don't feel the need to fib! If you think calcium because of the stalagmites and calcium carbonate, that's enough.

[madmanatw.livejournal.com]

Holy cow, are there really that few fires?

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Now for some group psychoanalysis...

[papersky.livejournal.com]

That was hard, but definitely the most interesting one of those I've done.

However, on the Chinese earth/air/fire/water/metal you would come out metal in my understanding.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh interesting! Particularly because you didn't pick iron or "Other" and then some metal for the chemical elements. I'm not like specific metal, I'm like elementally metal?

I thought of including metal or the other fifth elements I've seen (wood and spirit), but then I didn't.

Not at all surprised at your water, though I can't quite say why.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You are worked metal, the element of earth run through with air, annealed in fire and quenched in water. Steel, not cold iron.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh.

Wow.

Oh.

[intrepida.livejournal.com]

I've never been clear on weather I was an "earth" or a "water" person. I think as I get older and become more "solid" in character, I'm becoming "earthier." As for the scientific elements, I'd choose Cadmium for myself, based on the name associating with "Cadmium red" paint and "Cadbury" chocolate. For you, I'd go with Curium, for its "women and science" association. (Ignoring that whole radioactivity issue.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, so far one of the consistent things is that I appear to be perceived as much more radioactive than the rest of you.

Which is fine.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

I would have said "story" instead of "plot" for you, because I associate stories with things that unfold organically and plots as engineered things (a la TNH's statement re: story being a force of nature), and stories seem to happen to you (or maybe that's just my poor perception of the way you experience it via your description and I shall stop expressing myself in run-on parentheticals now, thankyouverymuch).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I deliberately didn't include some things like "relationship," which is what I actually write "from."

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I checked "characters" because that was the closest to "characters' relationships" on the list.

[sraun]

Which element?

me - Silicon
you - Rhenium

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize I'd been that dense....

[sraun]

Nah, that weird (in a good way). I've had a soft spot for Rhenium ever since read E.E. "Doc" Smith's Subspace Explorers.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh. Err. Well, good then.

[redbird]

My first pair of answers are almost entirely arbitrary. I like the second set of questions. For the third, I settled immediately on "carbon-based life form" and that's everyone reading this, as far as I know. (Any hooloovoos out there?)

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I can do a convincing Horta.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

This was a really interesting poll. I don't know you well enough to put down a chemical element, though as above, you might be carbonate ions as a whole (baking powder, baking soda, rocks rocks rocks). I've had a thing for iron for a good few years now-- not the element itself, but its spot on the periodic table. Fe is such a comforting symbol.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Wait, iron was on there? It's been too long staring at chemistry if I can't recognize it without the Fe.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It will break your brain, to be sure.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Part of it's that iron and Fe are two different things in my brain. Iron is industry, the death of faeries, wrought into railings, and fireplace pokers. Fe is language, fey, pleasant associations of iron, and staring at the periodic table until I got character names out of it (though I haven't sold my Geasse story, I do love her name).
And I don't think I'm particularly ironlike in either sense.

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

I have always fancied Mercury but not in a "oh look, I can poison people!" way, more in a flexible and useful kind of way. I probably am poisonous in large quantities though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Have you read Stephenson's Quicksilver?

[brooksmoses]

A while back, I was reading a 1911 Scientific American Cyclopedia of Recipes, and came across the mercury section -- which included several different varieties of "mix mercury and powder of some other metal, knead between your fingers until it makes a soft paste, use it to stick other bits of metal together, and then use some sort of gentle heat to evaporate out the mercury."

I had this sudden feeling of having been terribly cheated, that such things could exist and have been part of basic workshop technology a century ago, and yet turn out to be be far too poisonous to consider actually using now that we know.

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

My dad, who was a very much older sort of dad, was born in 1896. He told me that one of the ways that small-time gold hunters would separate mercury from gold was to stick the mercury tainted gold into a potato and bake it and hope that the oven didn't blow up in the process. I'm always in a state of awe and horror over those old processes. So clever and simple, and yet sometimes dangerous beyond belief.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

Out of the chemichal elements, I would associalte myself with Cobalt. For no good reason, really.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

While logical reasons are sometimes interesting, they're certainly not required in this kind of poll.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

I picked argon for the way you shine when energized.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Aww, thanks, Kev.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I picked "iron" for you, because of your issues with maintaining iron.

And "water" for you, because it flows and adapts to its surroundings but is not compressible (not as a liquid, mostly, anyway--hey, I'm an engineer). Because being compressible seems like a bad character trait.

Yeah, I know. I don't quite get it, either.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I could maybe be a bit more compressible than I am, though. Not a lot. Just a little.