[(±) s0] The latest Q&A bandwagon!

[chalcedony_jade]

Remember when text was text, and rich text was usually HTML, instead of being uploaded as a JPEG? Wait, no, that only happened in an alternate universe. Though for some reason, some of you do remember, and you put up text versions and thank you if you did.

Bandwagon time! This comes from Mastodon, largely via mawr indirectly (I think they did the gradients?). All answers will be cross-posted in both directions (comments or batch posts here, replies to this status there). I've increased the contrast some in the HTML rendition. Nobody seems to have any idea where this came from originally, so I'm assuming it's free-floating? Ish? Such chaos!

I'm not sure how well we can answer a lot of these, so it'll be an interesting challenge…

Get To Know Me?

1 Like Star Thing = 1 Answer
(or reply, with or without a number)

1. Explain your handle/screen name.
2. Who inspires you and why?
3. Do you value the opinions others have of you?
4. What are you most looking forward to?
5. What's one life rule you follow?
6. What's your dream job?
7. Which fictional character do you wish you could meet?
8. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
9. If you were a cartoon character, who would you be?
10. What skill would you like to master?
11. In what situation would you feel most out of place?
12. What artist do you really like, but rarely admit to liking?
13. What gets you fired up?
14. What annoys you most about the fandoms you're part of?
15. What do you do for stress relief?
16. If forced, what day would you pick to re-live forever?
17. How quickly do you jump to conclusions about people?
18. If you were a doll, what accessories would come with you?
19. What've you accomplished that's given you the most satisfaction?
20. What's the worst thing you can think of to put in a piñata?
21. What's the biggest waste of money you've seen?
22. What common misconception do you hate to hear repeated as fact?
23. Where's your favorite place to meet awesome people?
24. What food do you find yourself craving most often?
25. What show or book series do you keep coming back to?
26. Among your friends, what are you best known for?
27. Who of your friends is most like you?
28. What was the most traumatizing moment of your life?
29. What's the best lesson you've ever learned from a work of fiction?
30. What's something you'll never do again?

Comments

[tixagon]

⭐

Mawr here!

Thank you for the attribution! I re-made the graphic because the original was just a screenshot of an RTF file that was horrendously hard to read by the time it had gotten to me... and because it wasn't gay enough. ~.=.^ I tried to improve the wording of a few of the questions as I re-typed them, then provided the text both for the benefit of those with disabilities and for others to remix or re-create as desired. ^^

Very nice work re-creating this in HTML! ♥️

[chalcedony_jade]

ObXkcd. And thank you (both for the improvements and for the compliment)!

[403]

I'm curious about #18.

18!

[chalcedony_jade]

#18. If you were a doll, what accessories would come with you?

(+) Uh. *brushes away initial answers that are too spicy for here* I wouldn't mind a nice elegant crown sometimes. A pretend bottle of preen oil… maybe, like, a staff? I don't know how I'd carry that. Are we counting just “accessories” in more of a fashion sense, or are we counting other parts of a playset? I'd have to be packaged with my sister, of course. Oh, and a 403 to climb on. Maybe some other friends. Some equivalent of saddlebags… maybe a jingly bell for my tail… I wish I could say “pile of books” or “running shoes” but that's a bit wishful thinking right now. We'll get there. Besides, if there's gonna be dolls of us, I want to look my best for the audience.

(−) Eheh. *brushes away stuff that's a bit much for here* Are we talking about more of a fashion accessories thing, or… ? Some kind of board game, maybe, especially if I get to play it with my sister and 403 as part of a whole playset. Maybe, like, oh! Oh! A little sculpting clay thing with plastic knives, or a set of wind instruments! I so wish we could do more stuff like that in the Reol Wyrld; if there's gonna be dolls of us, we might as well make them a wish fulfillment thing, right? <..< And a squeaky hammer! A squeaky hammer! *romps around in a circle a few times before stopping suddenly* … wow, Illum was right, we are kind of cartoon characters already.

[xyzzysqrl]

Personally I'm curious about 9. For semi-obvious reasons, I guess.

9!

[chalcedony_jade]

#9. If you were a cartoon character, who would you be?

(+) I mean… aren't we almost cartoon characters already? We definitely feel more plausibly cel-shaded than our predecessors were. Even the eyes and everything are kinda skewed in that direction.

(−) I guess that's true. I don't really even remember much in the way of what they watched Before, either. Well, no, I do a little, maybe I just don't feel like most of it was that good. Let's see… *rifles through archive memory* oh, there's a couple of things we tried just to see what they were like, Dexter's Laboratory, Jonny Quest… the characters from those are all kind of… Not Good… oh, jeez, Disney's Atlantis, that has really wonky undertones—

(+) What about more “serious” animated work? Oh! Does Ghost in the Shell or Spirited Away count? … we should really watch those for the first time again. And I remember there being a screening of Wolf Children at some point.

(−) I wonder if part of the problem is that an awful lot of more recent animated films, at least in America, are done in CG 3D instead; they feel like they don't count as “cartoons” even though they're filling a similar niche.

(+) Hey, since you're so impatient, how about S*nic the—

(−) NO. NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT. DON'T EVEN SAY THE NAME.

(+) *giggling* So, okay. There are a few obviously almost-analogous pairs from FiM which I was trying to downplay because it felt tacky and overplayed and too-obvious, but since this is GTKU time I'll say them anyway. The “higher” versions of ourselves (when we can render them well, which is not often) can fall into Celestia/Luna-like roles, and the “lower” versions sometimes have more of a Sweetie Belle / Scootaloo dynamic. But I think the real answer is “ourselves”.

(−) I think the other real answer is “we need more time to rebuild our cultural reference pool once we're not spending so much of our energy doing cleanup” combined with “most of the stuff we have available isn't ‘cartoon’ enough to count”. I bet Illum would make a good tachikoma in her more obedient moods, though. And the compound of us might be a good Chihiro. And I can feel a lot like Wreck-It Ralph in more antagonistic moods. >..<

(+) … San from Princess Mononoke.

(−) … huh. That sounds like a compelling idea. But we haven't watched that for the first time again yet, we're only remembering Kodomo reading something baxil wrote about it a long time ago. Gah, we really need to update our pools. We might have to replace that 3DS at some point, huh. I want to actually play TWEWY sometime.

(+) What about the—was it Niels Bohr?—with four coplanar cookies jammed into his oversized mouth, from that partly-cartoon-illustrated book on basic principles of quantum mechanics?

(−) *facepaw*

(+) Or maybe given the amount of lingering rage in here sometimes, we could use this as an excuse to watch the Angry Birds M—

(−) *clamps a paw over Illum's muzzle* Next question!

3, 6, 25

[chalcedony_jade]

#3. Do you value the opinions others have of you?

(+) I'm not sure we've figured out how to listen to them effectively yet. I feel like we're kind of in a self-absorbed phase, or at least I hope it's a phase. I'd like to value them more, but the viewscreen might be covered in gunk, and how do we do it in a balanced way? Doesn't that depend on being able to perceive the relative standing of the “others”?

(−) Kinda? Really depends on whether their values seem congruent. It's more a matter of “extracting useful feedback information”. With close friends I definitely try to listen; with others it kinda turns into a blur of anxiety. I also get the feeling people may be disinclined to express opinions of us and that may turn out to be lethal somehow; I dunno how to fix that yet.

#6. What's your dream job?

(+) Being a leading role model for (some group of) people being less anxious and atomized, and helping smoothly encourage a culture of good habits that sticks so they don't fall into as many traps. Having enough leverage and predictive power that I can spot stuff falling before it starts and be able to do something about it, and accurate and deep enough feedback on what people want and feel that I can be confident I'm acting for them and not being an accidental tyrant.

(−) Maybe digging into the machine learning research. Maybe being a Shadow Manipulator of Electronic Forces? Or maybe just “dragon who lives in the river and comes out to play every so often”.

#25. What show or book series do you keep coming back to?

(+) FiM is the super-obvious answer right now, though it's less “keep coming back to” and more “stay attached to but less so over time” (the material's kinda drifting). We were also on a Stargate kick for a while.

(−) I have no idea, yet. I really want to dig into Dirk Gently sometime, since we haven't had any experience of that yet. Also I want to see how much academic journal access we can get. Does that count?