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Jan. 28th, 2008 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nano_mooseI STOLE THIS MEME FROM SQUEEM. Ask me your crazy questions!
We all think we are so close on LJ, but really, we know nothing about each other. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.
We all think we are so close on LJ, but really, we know nothing about each other. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.
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Date: 2008-01-28 04:08 am (UTC)Also: Do you have/want/like any pets? (I know I asked Patrick this, but it's a good question. And I'm curious.) Have you ever had to go to the hospital? Do you prefer the dessert to the main meal (or sweet to salty)? Which book/video game was most influential? Have you always been a nerd, or did someone set you on your path? Who is your hero?
As always, you may pick and choose and/or ignore completely.
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Date: 2008-01-28 05:47 am (UTC)My parents are both teachers and both retired. My mother is a teacher of the blind and my dad is a principal at a special school. I only have one set of grandparents left, the ones on my mother's side - my dad's dad died before I was born, and my dad's mum died when I was a little girl.
I HAVE SO MANY RELATIVES. My father has five siblings and my mother has ten, TEN, and most of them are married and have children, usually at least two. I don't see them all that often because they live in North Queensland, but they're pretty cool people. Whenever the cousins and I get together we have to try and one up each in geekiness. Time before last we thrashed them at Crash Team Racing and locked up the Playstation because we'd been playing so long.
Pets: We have Janet, as aforementioned. She belongs to my sister. We also used to have Stubby, a Red Heeler we got off a farmer. He belonged to my oldest brother, was the runt of the litter, and fit right in with our family - he was very smart, but extremely lazy. There's a picture somewhere of him, me and my sister as toddlers which cracks me up every time I find it: I'm yanking his tail, and he's wheeling around to bite my sister. He's gone now. I think it was leukemia. I miss him a lot.
Hospitals: My sister used to have to go all the time, because she had really bad asthma when she was younger. I had it too, but nowhere like what she had. I've also had to have a needle taken out of my foot, to get a tetanus shot after I stood on a nail, had my head X-rayed when I fell backwards off a bench and hit my head on concrete, had my arm X-rayed when I slipped over and bent it the wrong way, and had my hips and leg X-rayed to try and work out if they were broken. (They weren't.) Despite all the injuries I've had and falls I've taken over the years, I've never broken a bone, unless you count a front tooth I had to get reconstructed. This is apparently because I am watched by an extremely harried angel.
Food: It depends on the meal. I've got this weird, psychological aversion to a whole lot of different foods that makes me a pain in the ass to cook for and rather, er, hazardous, nutritionally, but I love salty and sweet food. If you put a gun to my head, I'd probably say salty - I love soy sauce and chickeny things. And bacon. Mmm, bacon.
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Date: 2008-01-28 06:17 am (UTC)I don't know if this should be a response to your family talkings or a new question on its own, but are you good with kids? I am terrible with them, in that I have no clue what to do with them or how to tell them no.
Pets: Both of my dogs died of cancer. Sucky suck suck. I feel so bad for all the pets I had when I was younger. I am pretty sure that I was horrible to all of them (unintentionally!)
Hospitals: HOLY CRAP OUCH. Why did you need your front tooth reconstructed? The worst thing that happened to me was one time in PE class (in, like, fourth grade) when I hit my finger against a ball and it bent funny and hurt a lot and I could make it look bent and gnarled and arthritic. Or, uh, maybe it was the time I skinned my knee and got a huge ass scar on my knee that was shiny pink for, like, two years.
Food: WHAT ARE YOUR WEIRD PSYCHOLOGICAL AVERSIONS TO FOODS. Or, uh, at least which foods do you have psychological aversions to? (One of my cousins absolutely loves salty things and puts, like, a teaspoon of salt on every meal, but she'll only eat saltine crackers if they don't have salt on them. BORING BUT TRUE)
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Date: 2008-01-29 08:30 am (UTC)My family isn't quite as nerdy as this section of it, but I have two male cousins who are basically me. Most of my other cousins are a lot older than me now, or a lot younger, for some reason.
I am not much good with kids! I'm one of those people who cannot hold a baby for fear that I'll break it somehow, and kids tend to bring out a lot of my tics, like the fact that I don't like people touching me unless I know them well. As you may have noticed, I'M KIND OF INSANE.
I needed my front tooth reconstructed because I broke it. I basically fell over with my mouth open and attempted to bite the concrete! It didn't actually hurt really bad until the dentist started poking it, but he fixed it up real good and now you can't tell. Although I can because it's much thicker than my other front tooth.
My aversion is that if I try to eat something that my brain doesn't want me to eat, I'll cough and gag even if the taste doesn't bother me. My parents have tried for eighteen long years to fix it, and have never managed it. I have to make do with iron supplements and stuff. There are lots of foods that I can actually eat, but the ratio is still skewed enough for it to be a good bet to let me get my own food.
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Date: 2008-01-29 04:54 pm (UTC)ROFL
I basically fell over with my mouth open and attempted to bite the concrete!
ROFLROFL!
Um. Um! I had a question! What was it? Oh, here is a question:
What would you like to be asked about?
What is your weirdest, OCDest habit?
You haven't updated your DevArt in a long time. Do you still draw?
Let's try that again.
Date: 2008-01-29 10:02 pm (UTC)So yes, you caught me, I really am trying to get everyone I know to play LGS things and spend all their money on games. Don't tell anybody!
Weird Habits: Probably my tendency to blurt out things without mentioning what I'm actually talking about so I go off on a little monologue that doesn't make any sense to anyone else. I also get phrases and stuff stuck in my head and have the urge to say them all the time; these days it's "Your mother plays card games in hell!" and various songs from Sweeney Todd. Lemme tell ya, it's not a good idea to start singing about how everyone in the world deserves to die and you're going to help them along complete with slashing gestures and crazed grins when you're supposed to be cleaning the counter. And you're really not very good at singing.
Arhts: I don't really use DevART for anything except a place to find pretty arhts when I'm in the mood for pretty arhts (I've been considering putting up links to fanart that I like when I talk about something shiny and new, actually). But I do still draw! Unfortunately, with computer blow-ups and shifting, an the fact that my sister lost my USB Drive (RRAGGH) I no longer have a) a scanner, b) an art program or c) a way to move the arhts from a) to b). It's really quite frustrating. Also, the art on DevART is old old old and I like to think I've improved since then, so please don't take at as proof of my current skill! It's mostly things from my fanbrat days that I can't be bothered to delete.
Re: Let's try that again.
Date: 2008-01-31 12:19 am (UTC)YOU WIN, NANO. THIS TIME.
Habits: Hah!! I do this a bit too, because I get confused about what I've said out loud and what I've just been thinking about. Recently I launched into a whole thing about the Michael Keaton Batman movies, having somehow convinced myself that we were talking about that, when really we were talking about something completely unrelated.
ROFL at your slashing gestures.
Arhts: You should totally put up fanart links! People taking hte time to rec any kind of fanwork alwys does my heart good. I'd really like to see some of your more current art! I hope you get access to a scanner sometime.
Are there any 'ships you're into besides Tom & Hester?
Beware of Teal Deer
Date: 2008-02-05 12:42 am (UTC)I will! There's a lot of really great stuff out there, even if DevART is sometimes full of phail and Kingdom Hearts fanart.
Ships: I'm not a very shipper-y kind of person. I do make jokes about crack OTPs (Sweeney Todd/razors! Sylar/brains! Altair/pointy things!) but ships/chemistry/etc. are kind of outside my notice. I am also frequently baffled by the emphasis put on romance in fandom to the extent that I fly into impotent rages about it.
It's like this, I think. Say I want to read a fic about, ooooh, Discworld, with Vimes and Vetinari having that awesome dynamic they have in the canon, with maybe some Carrot being halfway between naive and really bloody scary. I guarantee you that if I put that in a search engine, the first twenty fics to come up would all pair Vimes and Vetinari together. I'm probably being irrational, and that some of those fics may well be very good, in-character studies of how that pairing would work.
But I don't want the pairing. I want the dynamic, the chemistry that isn't sexual. That fact that people would interpret it as sexual pings my OOC radar just by existing, but I know most people don't think of pairings that way. I just can't be happy with the fact that the first thing many fans look for in new fandoms is the romantic subtext.
If I go any further I'll probably break into a rant about the death of platonic relationships and the marginalization/bashing of female characters, so I'll stop before I get wank on you. The problem is that I only get this way occasionally - had you asked me last month, I'd have probably listed a few crack pairings and more seriously gone into Jack/Myrtle, Tanith/Stephanie (WHICH MAKES ME FEEL LIKE A HUGE PERVERT HAHA) and babbled for a while about Garrett and Viktoria and their weird hate/affection/mutual need/notfriendship...thing. IT'S BEEN THAT KIND OF MONTH.
But finally, please please don't interpret this as any kind of attack on you and your likings! I love my flist and my flist's writin's and my flist's discussin's and that was mainly directed at fandom as a whole and entirely a product of personal taste. I AM JUST KIND OF A WANKER.
Re: Beware of Teal Deer
Date: 2008-02-06 12:41 am (UTC)There's a lot of series I love where all I want is more of the canon, and with that kind of thing I usually don't even bother trying to look for fanfic 'cause I know I won't find it. Which is depressing. And often I find myself desperate for some nice long action-adventure gen fic and nowhere to turn to.
(WHICH MAKES ME FEEL LIKE A HUGE PERVERT HAHA)
ME TOO! LET US EXPRESS OUR SOLIDARITY BY PERFORMING ASECRET PERV HANDSHAKE
Also! I have the entirety of Utena on my computer. Would you be interested in having me send some episodes over on a DVD-R? (I think Squeem said you wanted to see it, but I think she may have also said you'd rather watch it on actual DVDs than on your computer, in which case my offer is no good. Anyways, just thought I'd let you know I'd be totally happy to send those out in case you're interested!)
MEANwhile I will continue to milk this meme for all it's worth! What do your favourite games have in common? What are some of your buttons -- you know, those themes or ideas or character conflicts that almost automatically make you go "Ooh!" when they show up in a story?
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Date: 2008-02-09 12:26 pm (UTC)That community's...wow. Er. Wow. Hey, come on, there's no shame in thinking Sweeney's hot! He's Johnny Depp! He sings! ...Although I'm very pissed off by the person who said he was Jack Sparrow/Edward Scissorhands all over again, because 1) he's not and 2) could you have possibly chosen two roles that were less alike?
I find myself desperate for some nice long action-adventure gen fic and nowhere to turn to.
Nnn, I know that feeling. Myself I'd like to see two characters interact without it having anything at all to do with sex.
...Except Tanith and Stephanie, of course, because they are meant to be (once they get a bit older). :D (Does the secret perv handshake involve surreptitious groping?)
Oooh, that would be great! I'm going to be totally poverty-stricken once I properly move to Brisbane, so I'd love to preview a bit before I save up and splurge on the set. Plus everyone seems to talk about how great it is, and I don't want to be left out. (I have your copy of Grim Fandango but everything is crazy and I seriously cannot even think about finding time to get to the post office right now and I am so, so sorry. D:)
In Common: ...It's two things, I think. No, three.
One is humour. I'll forgive an awful lot about a game if it can laugh at itself, because really, so many video games are just ridiculous; the whole medium practically embodies the sort of mentality that adds together zombies, ninja, robots and Nazis and calls it THE MOST AWESOME FANTASTICAL THING EVER!!!!111 For example, Thief is an extremely dark series. It's about a lot of the very worst aspects of human nature; what depravities extremism can drive us to stoop to, all the while believing we are absolutely in the right. There are lots of moments that send shivers down my spine in their quiet creepiness. It also takes time out to have two guys argue about bear fights. Metal Gear Solid is another example and just fantastic about this. "It's like it was my destiny to be here, in the box." And I didn't realise why I loved the Jak series so much until I replayed it and remembered how self-aware it was.
The second thing is views. I love views. I love being able to stand still and go, "My god, it's full of stars!" It's not enough that the graphics are good; there has to be genuine beauty there. In Bioshock, I found a room ankle-deep in water where somebody had grown roses at the foot of a waterwheel, lit with jewel-like splashes of colour from some nearby paper lanterns, and it was so beautiful I stared at it for a good minute, awed by the way the roses glowed with light and almost tangible softness. In Shadow of the Colossus I openly gaped at the sight of some flooded ruins; the reflections in the water and the colour of the sky and the peace and solitude took my breath away. In Jak II I climbed a tower and beheld a city spread out beneath me in exacting detail. I love that those moments are so very personal - you find them, you notice them, and so they belong to you alone.
The final one is motion. I'm trying very hard to phrase this so it doesn't sound insane: I like to feel like the character I'm controlling, especially quick, nimble, clever characters - Garrett, the Prince, Ico, Jak. Even Altair - I'm really annoyed at Assassin's Creed for a lot of reasons, but I cannot fault Altair's moves; I really did feel graceful and precise and deadly while I was parkour-ing it up on the roofs of ancient Jerusalem. This is primarily the reason I'm holding out so much hope for Mirror's Edge. If they can pull off a game based around motion in first person and not have it suck or cause one to be ill, then...well, I might just have to hand in my empty social life so I can play it without interruption.
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Date: 2008-02-11 01:38 am (UTC)Jack Sparrow/Edward Scissorhands all over again
ROFLROFL Oh, Internet. Will you ever not be crazy.
(Does the secret perv handshake involve surreptitious groping?)
And how! :D
Oh man, awesome! I'm very interested in what you'll think of it, even if it's just various o_O faces. I will send that out sometime this week! And omg Grim Fandango omgomgomg. Don't worry about it! I know moving and school stuff is crazycrazycrazy! I hope things go as smoothly as they can for you!
Metal Gear Solid is another example and just fantastic about this.
Yes. YES! I can't really think of anything to say but YES! I wouldn't love Saiyuki nearly so much if it weren't so fantastic about handling both the horrible angst and the silliness, and how much it invites you to laugh at the characters. The things that break you heart about them can be the same things that crack you up about them in a different situation. ♥ ♥
Oh, Shadow of the Colossus had so much gorgeousness in it. The scope of everything just blew me away. I remember my brother saying, "This is what a Lord of the Rings game should be like." These long, long, long rides through beautiful landscape, wondering what's going to be over the next hill. (He took the game away so I never got to finish it. One of these days I'm going to buy it for Squeem. It's not squandering my money if I spend it on someone else!)
I really did feel graceful and precise and deadly while I was parkour-ing it up on the roofs of ancient Jerusalem.
Arrrrgh I want to play it and Bioshock so much. SOME DAY I WILL HAVE MONIES. And I think I know what you mean: I loved the animation in the Sly Cooper games so much: not just watching Sly scurry up poles or tiptoe across a rope, but watching the guards move around -- they each had their own stance and stride. And since I'm often trading off the controller, it just makes me ridiculously happy when a game's almost as fun to watch as it is to play. MGS3 too, again! I know Snake's not running up walls, but slithering on the ground, the way he's extra careful stepping over bodies, and the excellent use of first-person made that game so much more involving than it could have been, especially since so much of it is about lying in wait.
Stupid length limit.
Date: 2008-02-09 12:27 pm (UTC)Here it is! "[My buttons are]...protagonists who are snarky, bastardly, ruthless, in various ways not great human being material. I like antagonists who are charming, cheerful, devoted believers that what they are doing is best (or entertainingly crazy! Entertainingly crazy is also fun). I like Steam Punk! I like hijinks! I like banter! I like Britishness and I like discussions with the Endless or other such anthropomorphic personifications.
I like conversations with people who, for one reason or another, do not or cannot reply. I like representations of one's subconscious, whether comedic or dramatic, or even both. I like characters who are alone, whether it be the traditional definition, or because they are the last of whatever they happen to be, or because it's just what they are, or because they prefer it that way. I like stars, symbolic weapons, water, light, and grace. I like bad puns and clever jokes, sarcasm, irony. I like kick-ass women. I like goofy men. I like the vice-versa. I like relationships that aren't romantic. I like relationships that are romantic, in interesting ways. Obsessions, devotions, religions, these are all good. Redemption, that's a big one. Innocent power, that's a really big one."
I'd also like to add tragedy. Particularly of the kind where the character heads down the road to hell, and finds it is indeed paved with good intentions. Or where circumstances just seem to conspire to completely fuck up his or her life using his or her own nature. Especially moments where they have this perfect storm moment of despair and grief and especially especially if they face their inevitable fate with style/grace/dignity.
God, so tired. This had better not be the onset of a cold this is like the worst possible time augh seriously I'm going to eat fourteen oranges and swim in chicken soup.
Re: Stupid length limit.
Date: 2008-02-11 01:43 am (UTC)Possibly I will have more to say to this sometime when I'm not so sleepy! But I hope you're not getting sick!
swim in chicken soup.
*ROFL* Good luck with that.
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Date: 2008-01-28 05:48 am (UTC)Sandman, the comic series by Neil Gaiman, introduced me to real horror and a love of words and this rule: "If you keep a story going long enough, it will always end in death." I've never forgotten it.
For games...sheesh. I'd love to cite something intellectual and famous and probably Japanese, but the truth? The Jak and Daxter series. Yeah, shut up. It basically gave me these:
-Explore.
-Persist.
-Collect everything.
-Talk to everyone.
-Don't use cheat codes.
-Use the break.
-Learn to time.
-Watch the sunset.
It's where I got my love of videogaming beauty and views, and my scorn for anyone who "can't time".
Heh, as you've probably realised, Thief is also a big one. It's just such a brilliant twist on the concept of an FPS - a First Person Sneaker, a more passive take on the formula that's just as pulse-pounding and occasionally deeply terrifying. I'd never loved playing games as much as the moment I escaped Angelwatch and laughed as I ran over the rooftops, halfway between hysterical relief and pride. ILU LGS ♥♥♥
Nerdetry: I've been nerd since I was small and loved books, but I only really came into Internet geeketry when I played Jak and Daxter and watched Invader Zim. Those led me to poke around looking for more - and while looking for more I stumbled on fanfic. And promptly wrote a rather terrible What-If fic that included OCs so two-dimensional you could poke holes in them with your finger. Great days. I do take a small amount of pride in that when I wrote the obligatory "Jak meets a girl in Haven and they go on a mission together!" fic, I gave her real motivations, quite a few flaws, several horrible, visible scars, a backstory that made sense, and didn't pair her up with Jak. The only real Sue-quality she had was silver eyes that I later downgraded to grey. It was still a terrible story, of course, but not in that way.
My Hero: Terry Pratchett. Brad Bird. The Boss. Aang!
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Date: 2008-01-28 06:33 am (UTC)I am pretty sure that all of my influential things have not been intellectual. Especially since most of them probably happened at a young age, and I'm pretty sure I had terrible taste as a kid.
Nerdetry: I kinda had to be led through most of my nerd journey. Someone introduced me to sci-fi/fantasy books, someone introduced me to video games, someone introduced me to fandom on the Internet, so I'm always interested to hear how people discovered stuff. And you totally get bonus points for your OC, especially for not pairing her up with Jak (not that I would have expected you to).
Other questions: Do you play any musical instruments? Um. Do you do any sports?
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Date: 2008-01-29 11:03 am (UTC)I know! It's sad. They should, they'd be good friends. Basically all the things I love in the world are both funny and clever, like Larklight and Grim Fandango and Joss Whedon. I celebrate stupid jokes and bad puns, of course, but I also love things that allow me to make my 'educated amusement' noise.
Also, some day, I need to read Sandman.
You do! You do! I can't even find words to describe how wonderful it is. I just deleted a big paragraph of babbling wherein I attempted to do so and failed! But there is one story in World's End, about the dreams of cities, which is only tangentially connected to the main storyline and not a particular example of Gaiman!yay, but I adore it. It's such a perfect concentration of the feelings I've ever had about cities that it feels like it's mine, somehow.
Man, The Hungry City Chronicles embodied that rule. It's also why I can't really get into mainstream comics, with their endless rebooting and rewriting and resurrection - the best stories are the ones that have a clearly defined end.
I'm pretty sure I had terrible taste as a kid.
Didn't we all?
I do not play instruments! My sister has her ukulele and is learning to play the guitar and the keyboard, though. As for sports, have you ever read Looking For Alaska by John Green? At one point the main character goes off on a bit of a tangent.
"I hated sports. I hated sports, and I hated people who played them, and I hated people who watched them, and I hated people who didn't hate people who played or watched them." Sounds about right.
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Date: 2008-01-28 06:26 am (UTC)Uh. Do you like to travel? Where have you traveled to? And what're your favorite books and video games, unless those are the same as the most influential ones.
... This is a fun idea for a meme.
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Date: 2008-01-29 11:30 am (UTC)I hate airplanes, though, and they hate me.
The influentials are my favourites to an extent, but I also really love: The Hungry City Chronicles, The Old Kingdom Trilogy, Shade's Children, Larklight and Starcross, the Harry Potter series, the Discworld series, Good Omens, Watchmen, Nextwave, The Messenger, The Book Thief, The Mother Tongue and I am going to stop there because I will eventually list my entire bookcase and go over the length limit. I don't play favourites with my books. *snugs them*
My favourite game used to be Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time, and I do still love it a lot, but it's kind of been usurped by anything I've played made by Valve or Looking Glass Studios (that is, Half-Life and sequels and Portal, and the Thief series and System Shock 2. There's also the Metal Gear Solid series and the Jak series. And oldschool LucasArts adventure games like Monkey Island and Sam and Max Hit the Road ("I'll call him 'Mittens', because I think he'd make a good pair of them,"). I'll, er, stop. Trust me, you don't want me to get into gushing about things that I love; I'll be here all day.
I am so bad at thinking up questions for these memes! Probably because I'm better at talking about myself. YAAAAAY EGO
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Date: 2008-01-29 07:46 pm (UTC)River boats! Those are nice. Also, I am amazed by and applaud your not having a license (even if you actually want one)! I was forced at gunpoint okay maybe it was a squirtgun and i just would've got a little water on me shut up to get my driver's license and I hate driving and WHINEWHINEWHINE.
Hee! I am much the same, actually, with books. (My motive there may have been entirely selfish because I like to ask people what they like to read and then look into anything they mention that I am not familiar with.)
I've no experience with the Prince of Persia stuff or Sam and Max Hit the Road (or Thief, obviously), but I've watched or played most of the others. Good games!