Tagging, Minus the Property Damage · 10:00pm Dec 23rd, 2012
[Edit:] I may have goofed. Someone has informed me that tagging is not considered in best form on this site... I sincerely apologize if I have committed a faux pas.
I generally ignore memes like this, but this one is a nice excuse to journal a bit.
Rules:
1. You must post the rules.
2. Each person must post 5 things about themselves in their journal
3. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and create eleven new questions for the people you tag to answer.
4. You have to choose 11 people to tag and post their icons on your journal.
5. Go to their page and tell them you have tagged them.
6. No tag backs
7. No stuff in the tagging section about "you're tagged if you're reading this". You legitimately have to tag 11 people.
Five things about me:
1. I am a Latter Day Saint (i.e. Mormon) and am deeply religious, but it surprises people that I like to question everything. If you don’t doubt yourself once in a while, and put everything to the test, you won’t actually be that good of a Christian. Exploration and unprejudiced examination are the best ways to truth, in any field.
2. I once built a working trebuchet with a thirty-foot throwing arm using nothing but rope and logs. When properly manned, it could hurl a water balloon well over a hundred yards. (That’s a bare minimum. I don’t actually know where it finally landed, but it was farther than we could see or find.)
3. I travel a lot, and I walk a lot. I estimate that I once walked and biked far enough in the span of two years to travel well over halfway around the earth. I also have lived in four states and dozens of cities, and am in-process of moving to a fifth state. That’s not even counting all the little trips and spontaneous wanderings I go on.
4. I am partially self-schooled. I’d like to think that I gave myself a better education than a majority of high-schoolers. I score phenomenally well on any nationally accepted metric, and, more importantly, I am well read and quite sociable. Take that, education system! Oh, I’m also a teensy bit anarchic and anti-authoritarian. Not a lot though. Law and government have their vital roles, and revolution rarely solves anything.
5. I drink almost nothing other than water by personal preference and am a vegetarian by apathy. Seriously, the only time I actively go out of my way to eat meat is on St. Patrick’s day, because real corned beef is too good to be believed. The rest of the year, my diet mainly consists of breads, eggs, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and sundry other vegetables. I really don’t feel the need to kill things in order to eat, though I’m not morally opposed to the idea.
Questions By Samusbot:
1. What are your favorite parts about the show and the fandom?
That is a totally unfair question. I love the music first of all. As soon as I heard Giggle at the Ghostie was the moment I realized that I like this show for little girls. I love the culture of love that the fandom at least attempts to foster. Yeah, there’s drama among big names, but most of the people writing and remixing and drawing are genuinely wonderful. The sheer scope and range of creativity that MLP has inspired is staggering. I would fain compare it to The Lord of the Rings in that respect. The standard world of elves, dwarves and orcs has given rise to a lot of fantasy and sci-fi. MLP does the same thing, by giving us new archetypes that are completely divorced from those three old standbys of fantasy. That is why I love writing MLP fics. It challenges us to look at the old fantasy tropes with new and happier eyes.
2. What would you do if you suddenly woke up in Equestria for real, not a dream or hallucination? Answer as both a human and a human-turned-pony.
As I noted before, I am really well traveled, and am pretty used to finding myself in random places with complete strangers. As a human, I really wouldn’t blink twice. I’d hike/ride to Canterlot and find work at or near the university. As much as I like the mane6, I probably wouldn’t actively seek them out, since my foreknowledge of them would be a little awkward. Besides, if there is something I have learned in my ramblings, it is that the world, ours or any other, has no shortage of friends to find, and it always pays to talk to strangers.
If I was a pony, I would be the best whatever I was that I could be. If I was a pegasus, I would get into cloud manufacturing and optimization. If I was a unicorn, I would get into the enchanted amulet business, and make stuff that was useful to anypony, not just unicorns. If I was an earth pony, I would probably work on an intercontinental passenger-airship as a butler. Come to think of it, I would probably want that job regardless of what form I went to Equestria in.
3. What are your top three favorite MLP fanfics? Why are these on the top?
School Daze by Paleo Prints. It was the first fic that I favorited on fimfiction, and the first to convince me that fanfiction was a legitimate form of expression. Really, if it hadn’t been for that, I might never have started writing fanfic.
Tonight I Shall be Laughter and its sequel, Today I Will be a Princess by Cloud Wander. They are beautiful and simple fics about the joy of being a pony. Pure wonder. Cloud is a genius.
An Infinite Number of Pinkies. I read this while I was still planning The Assumption of Applejack. It was fantastic and well characterized. It’s one of the best alicorn fics out there.
4. Who are your top three favorite characters from the show? Why?
You ask the impossible. I shall try.
I love Luna. Even in canon, for what little we see of her, so much is implied. She is a mare out of time. Unable to relate to, and indeed feared by, ponies in the real world, but intimately familiar with their dreams, she bears a horrific burden.
Applejack, for the simple reason that I have been writing her and spending so much time getting into her head and sussing out what makes her tick. She wasn’t even one of my favorites when I started writing Appletheosis. Now that I have a clear understanding of her motivations and flaws, I adore her character.
The third… Aargh! Why does it have to be just three!? Ok, fine. I’ll pick randomly from among the many fine ponies that deserve to be on this list: Apple Strudel, for being smooth with the ladies. I don’t know…
5. From favorite to least favorite, list the following characters: Spike, Princess Celestia, Nightmare Moon, Princess Luna, Discord, Cadence, Chrysalis, Iron Will, Trixie.
You won’t give up on this, will you? Ok, Luna, Celestia, Chrysalis, Nightmare Moon, Discord, Cadence, Trixie/Iron Will. The last two on the list are an anomaly, as, unlike the rest, I find them somewhat uncompelling as characters, they are mostly interesting for the circumstances that surround them, not their actual personality.
6. What is your favorite instrument?
As for a specific, dedicated musical instrument, it’s either the monosynth or taiko drums. Rock violin being a close third. I also love gabber and cut/remixed music of all stripes for the way they take voice and turn it into something other than a means to convey lyrics… And the berimbau is pretty cool. I adore marimbas. Panflutes are sweet sounding. Then again, steel pipes shattering are sick. Yeah, I have music in my library ranging from aural-noise-music to vocaloid and back to classical and dubstep and classic rock and reggae and moombahton and rap and country and people banging on metal sheets. When I say that I love all types of music, I mean it. Give me melody and give me rhythm, or just give me sound with a texture, and I will soak it up.
7. Do you have a hobby or play an instrument? If so, what is it?
There are few (inexpensive) hobbies that I haven’t tried. Writing and drawing are the two that I come back to most often. I don’t play any instrument very well, but I’m a decent singer.
8. Do you prefer to get things like homework and chores done as soon as possible, or do you procrastinate?
I prefer to situate myself so that I don’t have to do the work in the first place. For example, I can live quite happily with only three or four dishes in my cupboard. No dishes means no washing, and no, I don’t believe in using disposable things. If that’s procrastination, or proactive, or proactive procrastination, I don’t know.
9. If you were one of the Elements of Harmony, which Element would you represent?
Generosity. I’m too iconoclastic for loyalty, but I will drop everything and give till it hurts to help a friend or even a stranger in need. I’ve given money to hobos that I’m pretty sure had more liquid assets than I did at the time.
10. What are your favorite shows and movies?
False. I’m changing the question. My favorite books are Watership Down, Plato’s Apology, Mossflower, Icarus Hunt, Night-Train to Rigel, The Iliad, Hexwood, The Thrawn Trilogy, The Honor Harrington Series, In the Forests of Serre (and really anything by Patricia McKillip), Puck of Pook’s Hill, How Much for Just the Planet, The Candle of Distant Earth, To Say Nothing of the Dog, The Goose Girl, The Ill-Made Mute, Dealing With Dragons, Beowulf, The Art of War, and of course, the Book of Mormon and Bible. All of the above I absolutely vouch for as being fascinating, emotionally rich and thought-provoking.
Oh fine. I don’t watch TV often, but when I do, it’s Dr. Who, Star Trek, MLP, Star Wars, and that’s about it. Really. I saw a couple of episodes of Psych once and liked them, and I had a girlfriend who adored Big Bang Theory and had me watch the first two seasons with her. In the end, I really don’t care enough about moving pictures on a screen, usually, to motivate me to watch them for an hour or two.
11. Are you a morning person, or do you like to sleep in till 10:00 or later?
I have a completely broken circadian rhythm. Seriously. I’m not insomniac, per say. I simply cannot align my sleep to the cycles of the sun or any sensible, repeatable arrangement that fits in a 24 hour schedule. Oddly, I usually get around eight hours of sleep, no more, no less. I could be up at 3:00 am, or I could be asleep until noon. Thankfully, I set my own hours for work at the moment.
My Questions:
1. What possessed you to start writing fanfics?
2. What was the moment that you realized that you were a brony?
3. How often do you write? This includes both pony and non-pony.
4. Wat is love, and how do I shot web?
5. Is there a story that you wish you could write, but feel unequal to? What is it?
6. Who do you most admire on Fimfiction? Pick three.
7. What works of literature, fiction or non-fiction, most inspire you and your work?
8. What is your favorite piece of headcanon?
9. Which pony or ponies do you love least?
10. Which ponies have the most character depth in your opinion?
11. What common life philosophy bugs you the most?
Tagged:
Vegie through apathy? I've not heard that one before. I like it.
*is tagged* Busy. Christmas special must take my full attention. Will do this after that's done. Looks like fun.
Slightly disappointed I'm not among your favorite stories.
642382 Well, the question limited me to three. Along Came a Spider is definitely a favorite of mine. The only reason I tagged you in the first place was because I sincerely respect you as an author.
642310 Yeah. I find animal rights activists who get all up in arms about killing animals for food quite silly. After all, animals do more killing of each other than we do. On the other hand, I don't need to, so why cause pain for something that really doesn't matter to me?
And I appreciate it. Although I may mix and match the questions offered here.
Thanks for the tag, I'll get right to answering when I can.
Oh, I had never been tagged before! This is so exciting!
Could you give me an example of headcanon? I'm not sure if I understand what it is.
642526 Sure! Headcanon is something that you assume or take for granted about the show that isn't actually spelled out in the show itself. One example, I say the blue and yellow fiddle pony from the last episode is actually Octavia, but she dyes her fur a somber grey when she goes on tour. There is no justification for this, other than body-type and cutie mark, but I like the thought.
Aaaaaand...done.
642817 Neat! Already read it.
642628 Ok, got it
aaaannd it's banned.
Eeyup, if you get caught tagging, you WILL be banned from the site. Just thought to warn everypony!