Five Questions Meme

[dunmurderin]

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. When others comment asking to be interviewed, ask them five questions.


My answers to 10 questions are below -- well, technically 9 since one was asked twice. Warning: SCHMALTZ BELOW!:

From Ravynfyre

1. How did you get into doing the relay thing? When we first came to Dayton, we got hired on at a place that did customer service work for Sprint PCS phones. We *thought* that the place was going to be a good bet and we'd be able to get back on our feet and all would be good. Turned out we were wrong (employment tip #1: if the place you're looking at working has a permanent sign that says "Place of Employment: NOW HIRING!" this will NOT be a good job).

We were about halfway through training for that job when Amy's mom told us that the relay service was hiring. We headed over there one day before training, applied, interviewed and got hired -- except the training class for relay was postponed from March to April so we stuck it out with the crappy training job until about a week before relay training started after which I quit (Amy was let go right after training because the job could never get her the login information she needed in order to take calls. That's right, she got fired because the JOB couldn't figure out a way to get her logged into the system so she could take calls. Considering we were told our training cost the company about $2,000 this was another big warning flag that this place was a bad job personified.)

Relay turned out to be night and day from this other place, which is weird since both of them are subcontractors for Sprint.

2. Plug n play, Energy field play, or sticky, and why?: Personally, I prefer plug and play in the broadest sense of the term -- namely as a catch-all for all of the myriad ways TFs can have sex without having human-style genitalia. The most common type of lovemaking in my fics is tactile stimulation, but other methods exist. The way it works out is that the TFs I write about tend to be too young, too vanilla, or too inexperienced -- sometimes all three -- to know or care about the other forms.

By and large, the biggest problem I have with sticky fics is that they make TFs too human -- not because of the genitalia (though that doesn't help), but because they stick so closely to Western, middle-class cultural values. Too many stickyfics could be turned into stories about normal humans just by changing the names and locations and that, to me, defeats the purpose of writing about alien robots. I think it's possible to do a stickyfic that retains the alien nature of the TFs, but those are few and far between (though Koi's "Nemesis Calling" is a good example).

3. You coming to BotCon? Probably not. We're planning on going to the GI Joe convention in Atlanta this year so that's going to be the big trip o' the year.

4. Favorite TF pairing/trine/whatever, and why? That I write? Huffer/Pipes. I like the idea of Pipes, being fascinated with Earth gadgets, also developing a fascination for Huffer who would be unimpressed with even the finest things Earth has to offer. Though someday, I need to write a Huffer/Gears fic just 'cause complainer-sex! Whoot!

Blast Off and Thundercracker as a pairing amuses me. Amy's the one who came up with that match . As does the idea of Blast Off and Range Viper #3 from the DIC GI Joe series -- though that one stalled out since I can't think of a way to make it work.

Onslaught and Scavenger is another idea that's stalled out, but I'd like to write it if only to get across the idea that the Constructicons are the best bangs since the big one being among the oldest mechs stationed on Earth and therefore dripping with experience and suchlike.

5. How did you meet Amy?: Back in 1998/1999 or so, a couple of friends of mine had started playing on a Transformers MU* called Transformers: The Lost Years. This was the first I'd heard of this sort of thing and I got interested in the stories my friends would tell -- particularly the story of Vortex ending up stuck in a hole with his feet sticking out. I got interested enough to create my own character, an OC Decepticon medic named Triage.

Amy was also playing on the game and we knew each other vaguely at the time. I met her face to face at a MUSH meet we held for the folks who lived near my college. And, like Michelle and Poptarts, I thought Amy was a bit strange at first -- nice, but odd.

Since we had a couple IRL friends in common, I met up with Amy a few more times after the MUSH meet and she still seemed a bit strange, but also nice enough.

And then in August 1999, my fiancé of 11 years passed away suddenly (short form: he was epileptic, he had a seizure that knocked him into a two day coma before being declared brain dead). Amy was one of the people who came to the funeral which really, really touched me since we didn't know each other very well at all. This got us to talking more and more on line and eventually, Amy was coming to Muncie to visit me and in November, she decided to come move in with me and the friends I was living with at the time.

Friendship turned into love over time -- which was something I never really thought I'd find again. We've known each other for about seven years now and I consider myself damn lucky to have her.



From ChaosAngel2112
1. Why do you think it is that more people write the Decepticon gestalt teams than the Autobot gestalt teams? I think because the Decepticon gestalt teams got more screen time of their own. Basically, Decepticon gestalt teams could show up without there having to be an Autobot gestalt in the episode but the Autobot gestalts usually are only in the episode if a Decepticon gestalt is involved.

2. How did you meet Amy? -- see above

3. Favorite way to pamper yourself? -- Food. Particularly fancy food like tiramisu and crusty bread with olive oil and cheese. God I love cheese...and pistachios. And books.

4. What's one thing that you would love to do before you die? -- Go to another country. Doesn't have to be Europe, I'll settle for Canada.

5. What sort of weather do you like best? Swimming weather and/or nice crisp fall weather where it's cool enough for a jacket but not OMFG cold. The weather we're currently having up here? Not a favorite. It can really let up with this snow/ice/rain/freezing rain/slush/fog shit.


From Newsy891

1. Why are the Combaties so fascinating? I blame the A-Team, though technically the difference between the my verison of the Combaties and the A-Team is that the Combaties really would have knocked over that bank.

Seriously though, it all goes back to MUSHing. I got interested in the Combaticons thanks to the portrayals of a couple friends of mine and eventually got to play Swindle.
Beyond that, the Combaticons strike on my interests in all things military as well as my enjoyment of bad guys. Their origins are tantalizingly vague and they get some great lines. Particularly Swindle -- the bit between him and Dead End in "Five Faces of Darkness" right after the Quints show up on Charr cracks me up every time.

And, at base, it helps that Amy is also a Combaticon fan (has been since she was ten) and thus, we encourage each other.

2. Follow-up to that, sort of: where did the Girl Brawl idea come from? beckyh2112 wrote a couple of ficlets about G1 Brawl being female (going off the idea that it is possible for a female Transformer to be big and bulky rather than the sleek sportscars we usually see in canon) and the idea got stuck in my brain as one of those facinating bits of crack that just won't go away. And then she challeneged me to write Girl!Brawl of my own and for some reason I couldn't get the G1 story I wanted to do to work and the idea struck me to write about Minicon!Swindle (again, since Becky had done a Minicon!Swindle story for me) and thus the AEC Combaties were born.

3. Blatantly ripping off one of Chris' questions to me... got some non-fanfic writing you'd like to share with the world? *meeps* Okay, but with the caveat that these stories and such are about 10 years old. I do have vague plans in the back of my head to write something original again, but these are some examples of original stuff I've done that are on the 'Net. http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Labyrinth/8584/stuff.html Be gentle.

4. Money is no object - where's your dream vacation? Hrmms... I'd like to go to England and go geek shopping (comics, DVDs, etc) and also go see things like Stonehenge and the White Horse and other historical stuff like that. I'd also like to visit Mile High Comics in Denver and Uncle Hugo's SF Bookstore in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

5. I really want to know where the word "begogglesmacked" came from because it's so cute. =D I made it up 8) I make up words sometimes. It's a strange, strange habit...

Comments

[dunmurderin.livejournal.com]

1. Spike/Carly/Bumblebee -- what's the appeal? Other than their adorablenessness *G*
2. How'd you end up going to Japan?
3. The hopping turtle icon -- is that available for LJ? The power of the hopping turtle compels me!
4. Who's your favorite Ninja Turtle?
5. Any advice for someone who is horribly needlephobic but who still wants to someday donate blood?