ask meme!

[queenlua]

stealing a meme from necrophilia:

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, or something you've always been curious about but have never asked, or something completely silly that you'd like me to answer for kicks. No limits on the range of questions, either: ask me anything you want to know about, whether it's a fannish opinion or a question about a fic of mine or trivia about my real life or my thoughts on events in the offline world.

Ask away. ♥

(my answers might, uh, take a few days *stares at Friday deadline for a thing* but feel free to ask away in the meantime!)

Comments

[kradeelav]

good luck on the deadlines! :D here's to both of us making it through the end of this week in one piece, ideally...

for meme times:
(1) something you think you should know about me > what's your favorite part about computers/hacking/etc?
(2) something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about > if u were made president of nintendo or whatever and could direct the next FE game in a different world (aka not tellius remake lol) - what would be the the bits you would want it to have? characters, tropes, subversions of previous games in the series, etc.
(3) something you've always been curious about but have never asked > funniest birding moment you've had recently
(4) something completely silly that you'd like me to answer for kicks > ok lua, here's the hardball one, are you ready? :D ..... what's your favorite meme after spending your years online, o wise sage hacker? :DDD

[necrophilia]

Favourite and least favourite bird, and why. ♥

[neotula]

You might have talked about this before, but I was wondering how long you've been writing fic for? What was the first thing that motivated you to write fic? I'm always curious about what gets people started.

[rionaleonhart]

What's the videogame and/or fictional character closest to your heart?

Feel free to ask something in return, if you'd like!

[lassarina]

If you had a sizable chunk of money to fund a new charity organization, what issue would you address and why? ("Sizable" here means "enough to make a difference", basically.)

What would your Teixcalaanli name be?

[queenlua]

ooh this is a fun q!

short answer:

the first fic of note I posted anywhere was Remnants of Restoration in 2011, so, uh, it’s been some ten-years-and-change by now? (yikes)

longer answer:

i certainly wrote some stuff as a kid that could be loosely classified as fanfiction (e.g. i wrote an elaborate adventure-fantasy thing featuring a lot of Pokémon as characters, but with ZERO regard for canon beyond “these pokémon look cool”), but honestly my main interest in my tweens/teens was writing for play-by-post RPGs and my own original fiction. i was aware fanfiction existed and even read it sometimes (Chrono Cross and Rurouni Kenshin especially), but i never really felt compelled to post my own or get involved in “fandom” more generally.

but, in college, at some point i got to thinking about this scrap of a fanfic idea i’d had for FE Path of Radiance years prior, and man that game was so cool, why did i never play the sequel… and i had a lot of time to kill during winter break…

and, yeah, typey-type and out fell three chapters of Remnants, faster than i’d written anything in ages.

so that’s what got me started, and then i actually got around to playing FE Radiant Dawn during the next semester, which filled me with a billion other ideas for fanfics that i promptly wrote (how did Almedha and Ashnard meet? did no one in the Dawn Brigade suspect Volug? can we see more of Zihark’s totally cool backstory please???), and that plus the lovely community in Tellius-fandom at the time (including kradeelav, HI KRAD :D) kept me around. (they were a small but active bunch! i’m always politely puzzled when people complain about a fic getting “only [x] comments” nowadays, like, i totally get everyone wants some validation for their writing, but also… back then, i was basically writing for an audience of five, lol, and so long as even one of them liked it i felt like i was winning.)

there was also an fe-contest community on Livejournal that was mad fun. like, it was a little pretentious, the whole idea was there was a monthly prompt, everyone would write a fanfic to the prompt, and then vote on their fave, but like… i don’t even remember if i won, or how many times i won if i did, lol. writing a thing all on the same prompt was the point, to me! winning was optional!

ANYWAY. yeah. and now it’s a decade later and i am STILL WRITING TELLIUS (and sometimes other things) lmao

[queenlua]

i will assume, for the sake of argument, that you are holding a metaphorical gun to my head as you ask this, because otherwise my only answer will be a steadfast NO NO NO, I WILL NOT CHOOSE BETWEEN MY CHILDREN, ALL BIRDS ARE PERFECT AND WONDERFUL

so, with that being said,,,,

worst bird: penguins. look, a huge part of the appeal of birds, for me, is when they’re flyin’ around doing their flappy thing; flightlessness is a problem. emus, ostrichs, and hoatzins get a pass because they are so damn weird they manage to be hugely appealing anyway, but penguins? eh. too mainstream. to conventionally cute. swimming is meh.

best bird: picking a single best bird is impossible, BUT, i can give best bird in various subcategories:

best warbler: hooded warbler. first saw these guys in west virginia and been obsessed with them ever since. they have little HOODS it’s so CUTE ahhhh (runner-up is black-and-white warbler because the way they hop up-and-down tree trunks is very unwarblerlike and also adorable)

bird with the best song : hearing pacific wrens singing in the spring always makes me lose my entire mind; literally one of the most beautiful songs in all of nature bar none

best angry bird: MARSH WRENS. they sound like furious lil typewriters! what’s not to love

bird with the best colloquial name: the slang term for yellow-rumped warblers is BUTTERBUTTS and i love it

best invasive species: people are way too mean to starlings D: it’s not their fault they’re invasive! and also they are SO PRETTY; i love iridescent birds so much sighs into hands

best north american bird of prey: osprey. did you know those bitches are zygodactyl? and also exist on six continents? and look and sound majestic as hell (unlike, e.g., the bald eagle, which i love, but has the stupidest-sounding call ever)? yeah i just think anything that can dominate land AND sea AND air this hard deserves a hat-tip

best gull: the swallow-tailed gull. goofy nocturnal gull that feeds on jellyfish and lives in the Galapagos, but one got EXTREMELY lost and wound up in a park near my old house one time and i have loved them ever since

best vulture: egyptian vulture. true story i wrote like half a novel when i was 13, about a giant Watership Down / Firebringer-style war between the birds, and there was a bunch of vulture representation of the form of Weird But Nice Pacifistic Cultists, and i had an egyptian vulture as their leader and it was awesome and i love them

[queenlua]

video game character: probably Naesala from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, which i don’t think you’ve played! but, y’know, imagine just a total rat bastard of a guy. who is also a raven-guy. because reasons.

his whole deal is, there’s three bird-people kingdoms (ravens, hawks, and herons), and they used to be all one big happy family, but due to various Issues TM in the past, they’ve split apart (even though various bonds of friendship run pretty deep between the groups).

the hawk-kingdom and heron-kingdom are both pretty proud and independent and standoffish, and in particular have hugely justified long-term beef against the various normie-human kingdoms, and act accordingly…

…whereas Naesala, as king, has had his country take the more supine approach, doing a whole lot of schmoozing-with-baddies and art-thieving and pirating and generally just making themselves a bunch of amoral black market kingpins, available to the highest bidder. which infuriates the shit out of the other two bird kingdoms, but also, hey, Naesala's people are doing pretty well, so,,,,

he’s exactly the right mix of “does awful things,” but also “unfortunately all of his choices are awful,” but also “maybe he could seem a little less satisfied about that state of affairs,” but also “deep down he does feel bad about it tho,” but also “maybe not badly enough,” but also “hey someone has to make the hard choices around here,” but also “jfc maybe don’t flagrantly fuck over your childhood bestie for marginal net gain”…

(i love awful people and messy situations can you tell)

i also love Simon Blackquill from the Ace Attorney games. he’s an edgelord. he’s extremely weird and awkward. he’s got that Stoicism In The Face Of Certain Death. he’s got a ridiculous sense of gallows humor. he’s got a cool bird. he’s sarcastic and fucks with people but would also make an excellent dinner party guest. what’s not to love

anyway! same question, right back atcha :P

[necrophilia]

I LOVE THAT YOU LOVE BLACKQUILL ♥

[queenlua]

blackquill is so good sighs into hands

[rionaleonhart]

I love that both of your answers are difficult bird-themed people. I haven't played any Fire Emblem games, but I agree that awful people and messy situations are extremely good.

he’s exactly the right mix of “does awful things,” but also “unfortunately all of his choices are awful,” but also “maybe he could seem a little less satisfied about that state of affairs,” but also “deep down he does feel bad about it tho,” but also “maybe not badly enough,” but also “hey someone has to make the hard choices around here,” but also “jfc maybe don’t flagrantly fuck over your childhood bestie for marginal net gain”…

GOOD. He sounds magnificent.

I THINK YOU'LL BE SURPRISED TO FIND okay, no, my answer is not at all surprising; the videogame closest to my heart is Final Fantasy VIII and the character closest to my heart is Squall Leonhart. I played FFVIII when I was thirteen and painfully awkward and had no idea how to talk to people, and I went, 'Wait, Squall's exactly like me! I can understand what he's thinking! Maybe that means it's possible for me to understand other people if I try?' and that's the story of how a Final Fantasy game taught me empathy.

[helicoprion]

Ospreys rule! FISH HAWK BEST HAWK

[helicoprion]

What is the best mixed drink you have ever had?

[airlock384]

actually asking this might be a mite forward or presumptious, but hey, since the name of the game is satisfying curiosities, I may as well ask--

how in the world do you find time to read as much as you do, while also having a full-time job and several hobbies?? are you just, like, a very fast reader?

(signed, a slow reader with ADHD-)

[airlock384]

“jfc maybe don’t flagrantly fuck over your childhood bestie for marginal net gain”
hmmmm ain't no cutting/spoilertagging on comments, huh? oh well; don't read this if you're imminently interested in tellius fire emblem now and also don't want spoilers-

anyway, iirc his plan was to rescue him right away? although clearly he didn't manage to put that into action fast enough that there wasn't time for Team Ike to clear like three maps in the interim, so he did endanger his childhood bestie very recklessly there. still, "so overconfident it's dumb sometimes" is a bit more like the character than "callous enough to bind his best friend to Oliver freaking Tanas ostensibly just for cash", even if he is very much callous-

(that, and also probably "couldn't just tell oliver to fuck off because blood pact", but boo contrived plot device-)

[queenlua]

haha! nah, not presumptuous at all. i'm actually a bit on the slow side, as a reader (at least compared to what readinglength.com generally estimates), but i do end up reading a decent amount anyway, and i actually sort of... had to fall back into the habit, sometime after college? (like many hedonistic youths, i uh, might've spent the year after graduation mostly partying and definitely not reading, lol)

anyway, when i got back into it, here's the stuff that helped:

* i'm pretty ruthless about ditching books the second they bore me. the problem with pushing through to the end of a boring book out of a completionist urge isn't that you're bored while doing it (though you are); it's just that if you do it too often, you start associating reading in general with boredom, which sucks! in particular, i went through a period where i just plain stopped reading anything for a while because i read four entirely awful books in a row. don't do that! just throw that shit in the garbage!

* similarly, if i do make the error of reading an awful book, i try to have some "go-tos" that i know will be delightful (rereads of old favorites, or else a new book by an author who i consistently like), and read one of those right after.

* curating a list of books that sound interesting, constantly asking trusted friends "what's your favorite book," finding books by author that your favorite authors like, etc, is very helpful, since then when you're in the mood to read something like [x] you can just look at the massive handy-dandy list you've built up. personal recommendations and recs from niche blogs are going to be much more interesting books on average, anyway—it turns out i kind of hate, uh, a lot of the stuff that's popular in mainstream sff nowadays (read: the stuff that's hyped up on the Tor front page), but, i've been pretty successful at finding the gems and avoiding the stuff i hate.

* also, once you have this list, you can occasionally glance at it, think about how wonderfully fascinating each and every one of those books sounds, do the mental math on what small percentage of them you'll actually be able to finish reading before you die if you start reading right now, and... well, i find that grimly motivating :D;;;

* i actually go back-and-forth between preferring to read on kindle vs dead-tree book every few months or so, and i just try to roll with whatever's more comfortable for me at the time. i've got a shelf of unread books and a pile of unread ebooks at any given time to choose from when the mood strikes

* i always carry whatever book i'm reading with me everywhere—a huge chunk of my reading gets done on the bus, on business trips, at the airport, waiting for a friend to pick me up, etc, and it all adds up

* even if you are a slow reader like me, you can usually finish a novel every other week by just reading an hour a day. i find this encouraging! (and if you pick the right novels, you won't be able to put the thing down, which is bad for sleep but great for getting through that list, lmao)

[airlock384]

that was such a prompt and thorough response! I have a feeling I activated your trap card there- (in any case, though, I greatly appreciate it!)

I suppose that first one there, vis-a-vis dropping a book immediately if it's boring me, would be where I'm committing a cardinal book sin. to an extent, it can't helped; at first there's all the assigned reading in school and sometimes you just get assigned the lousiest shit ever (I am eternally plagued by vague memories of a Cool Male Lead who Has A Very Philosophical Reason For Never Cleaning Up His Place), and then there's uni and well, I am now in my third course in which the reading is bad in some unique way. (at least this time around, it's bad because it's absolutely interminable, even if it's usually interesting and reads well until you start getting exhausted-). and then there's the ADHD -- and I was about to say that I always have to push myself at least a little bit in order to get any reading done, but now that I think about it, huh, no I don't. some things I just find myself swept along by so spontaneously, I will murder my sleep without a second thought in order to keep going (like a certain friend's very good fanfic, for example-). I suppose I've got to normalize it for myself that reading for leisure should be something I do leisurely, even if I'm trying to read about more interesting topics!

I do also have an hour-long daily commute that I could stand to use for reading more often, but then again, 7 AM is probably the exact kind of time when most kinds of reading would require an amount of pushing through-

anyway! I'll make a note of all these recs and hopefully one of these days I might draw out a plan of engagement from them -- again, thank you very much! in exchange, one of these days I could happily bolster that existentially long rec list of yours by pointing to a few particularly interesting classics of Brazilian literature

[neotula]

hell yeah! I think for me it was Smash Bros Melee and seeing all those cool characters together and getting ideas from it. I definitely thought the FE and Zelda characters were cool, and it snowballed from there. I'd never really played video games before that, and I was super into what I saw.

It for sure feels good to find that interest that just clicks and to take it from there and even better to find buddies to share it with. It's funny, but I think for me back when I started writing fic (around 2011 too, actually!) I was super concerned with people seeing it. I wasn't very good at writing, and I was always really worried about people liking what I wrote. As years have gone by, I've definitely gotten better at writing for myself and friends and having a good time doing that. It seems the best way to do fandom is to find friends who like the same things and run with it.

That lj thing sounds super cool! I wish there was more like that for FE games other than three houses now, but I guess the closest thing I know of is like when people do a character/ship week or zine.

Hell yeah to the things that stick around! It's always good to find a favorite that sticks.

[queenlua]

I think if a game is more than 15 years old, spoiler tags are null and void, also Aerith dies sorry to break the news :PPPP

and, yeah, i was giving the maximally-uncharitable interpretation for cheeky affect, though I did also write a fic with said maximally-uncharitable interpretation for This Is Slightly OOC But I Love Angst purposes, so, i have biases here lmao

(i, always wonder if the PoR writing team already had blood pacts in mind already when they wrote that game! i actually think maybe they didn't? Naesala comes off as tonally pretty different in 9 vs 10—in 9 he has a bit more of a "bastard for a sake of being a bastard" vibe, whereas in 10 he's obviously giving off some melancholy/guilt signs like woah, which can be explained by in-game circumstances, of course, but... could also just be a minor retcon, lol.)

((AND ACTUALLY, it occurs to me this is as good a place as any for the 2am shower thought I had yesterday. blood pacts are extremely stupid, we all agree, but, it's actually kind of close to being a metaphor for something actually potent and cool—specifically, that thing where one state will buddy up with some other state that's full of flagrant human rights abuses or w/e Because Of Oil, see Saudia Arabia etc... the problem is Blood Pacts are literally no upside (whereas oil is, y'know, combustible and such), so it feels stupid they even exist, and also the power dynamics end up being really different in a jarring way in the Blood PAct scenario, but... i wonder if this is what the devs had in mind, originally? and just totally bungled it in various script rewrites, actual implementation, etc???

anyway yeah there's your Tellius Thought Of The Day))

[queenlua]

and that's the story of how a Final Fantasy game taught me empathy

d'awwww, that's so charming i'm charmed <3

[queenlua]

ooooh that's a good q

the first three that come to mind:

1) there's a ridiculous pretentious speakeasy here in Seattle that does that whole "we have no menu, just tell us ~*~what you have in mind~*~ and we'll make a drink based around that concept" schtick

which is usually not worth it, because the drinks are all like 20+ bucks and take a while to make, BUT, i went there once for a friend's going away party and like. that shit was really good. in particular, i remember being impressed that i requested "something that tastes like sweetarts, but like, the classiest sweetarts you've ever had in your life," and DAMN if that wasn't exactly the drink i got??? incredible. delicious. 10/10 would order again

2) the best drink i've discovered in the past year is the espresso martini. it's so simple, just vodka and kahula and a shot of espresso, but it's so GOOD—normally i'm not that into vodka as a base, and not that into coffee, but they just work together really well here? and FORTUNATELY bird guy has a press-button espresso machine here at home, so, i can make it for myself ANY TIME I WANT lol

3) this tiki bar in LA is insanely good and insanely dangerous. every single thing i ordered there was astounding, but also, even though i normally hold my liquor insanely well, after two drinks i was extremely done. the tiki drinks there had a lot of... texture? depth? to them, that i haven't tasted elsewhere? like, i love tiki drinks, but ordinarily they just taste like someone dumped every fruit juice in the house in with the rum., right? and here they tasted like something special. 10/10, would walk to a weird rando tiki shack next to a giant highway again

[queenlua]

Huh! This was such a good question that I looked through my last n books read, to figure out how the hell I heard of each one, and the stats are something like:

Recommendations/gifts from friends/family: 12
Book or academic blogger reviewed it: 9
Mentioned on Tumblr or Twitter: 7
Promotional material (author is famous, won awards, heard them on a podcast, etc): 5
Impulse buy in a bookstore: 3
Bird book club: 2
From my classics-I-should-read-someday list: 1
I was trying to learn a specific thing and searched for a relevant-looking book: 1
Other: 5

So, mostly I get recs from friends and blogs. (Said blog list is really random and has been curated over many years—e.g. I really love this random history-of-Africa professor's blog, which features a new book review each week, so sometimes he's reviewing new work in his field in lovely detail and I'm like "this sounds fascinating, time to go read more history", and SOMETIMES he's like "here's this pulpy scifi book i adored as a kid and reread recently", so I get a lot of my more random stuff from there, lol.)

And yeah, basically anytime I see a book that looks remotely interesting, I jot it down in my Giant List O' Books file on my computer, and every couple months I stare at the list and move the more interesting ones closer to the top, and whenever I'm at a loss for what to read next, I just stare at that :P

(Also, a thing I've often used in the past, though it doesn’t show up in these stats, is "enjoy an author, go look up an interview where said author names their favorite authors, and go read all of those," which is a bizarrely effective strategy for finding good books. e.g. I have mixed feelings about Maggie Stiefvater's writing as a whole, but I absolutely adored I Capture the Castle, which she named as one of her favorite books. And I can see why; it felt like that book was doing a lot of the things Stiefvater wanted to do, but better :P)

I generally read a bit each evening when I'm at home, and a lot more when I'm traveling—airplanes are one of my favorite places in the world to read!

[helicoprion]

These all sound... delightful. I mean, I'm a lightweight so I'm pretty sure that tiki bar would kill me instantly, but a delightful death???

[necrophilia]

I love starlings! I see a bunch of them outside my window at work every day. Their little star-speckled feathers are so pretty.

[queenlua]

(1)

honestly there's something just kind of soothing about reading specifications, like... the intel sdm or the pci spec or whatnot. i've made this comparison before but it really does twiddle the parts of my brain that likes fanfiction—you read canon, you're like "wait doesn't the existence of (A) and (B) imply weird things about the implementation of (C)", and you dig around and, yeah, turns out they were only able to implement (C) due to some horrendous retcon job that's got all these sharp edges, and maybe if you twiddle things just right you can make it do things it wasn't supposed to do...

this is ironic given that i focus more on software security nowadays, which rarely has nice things like "specs" or "any design whatsoever" lmao. but it's definitely something i love when i'm actually working at the hardware interface

(2) oh gosh, uhhhh.... i'm an awful person to ask this, lol. i love the FE games a ton for what they are but it's not the kind of canon that leaves me plotting/daydreaming much for next entries in the series, yaknow? (unlike e.g. stuff with more continuity for characters between new entries or w/e)

first thing that comes to mind is just redoing the general idea from Awakening but with some decent goddamn character writing. i really liked the kids in that game, and the time-travel-to-fix-your-errors setup was deliciously potent, but there just wasn't any real vibing between the cast, so like, nowadays i can't remember a damn thing about the story, lol

(3) yesterday i saw a WOOD THRUSH while out and about??? which is not a rare bird per se, but, it's a very skulky bird. you'll always hear it way more than you see it, and if you do see it, it'll skitter to hide in some leaf litter right off

so imagine my shock when i'm tromping through some forest and the thrush is just there? three feet in front of me? fully in the open?

and naturally i opted to not move or breathe or blink whatsoever for twenty entire minutes while i watched him just CHILLIN and it was so GOOD and i was only a little dizzy from lack of oxygen afterwards lol

(4) omg i searched everywhere and i couldn't find this one D: but i can describe it lol

it's the WHO WOULD WIN format

on the left is "a billion lines of microcode and carefully-crafted silicon by the best engineers on the planet", with a photo of some Intel CPU

on the right is a photo of this lil function with the label "one jumpy boi"

(the joke here is, setjmp/longjmp are commands that can change the control flow in your program at a very low level; the means you use to exploit the Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities is, y'know, tricking the CPU into doing a "jump" when it shouldn't, and hence... one jumpy boi :P

in general something about "boi" just sends me, absolutely one of my favorite internet words, and the thing with just calling `setjmp` a "jumpy" thing sends me even harder, and, yeah, there's my niche favorite meme ever. good meme format too :P)

[queenlua]

honestly i thought the method Mackenize Bezos used for deciding how to donate her fortune was an extremely classy and intelligent and down-to-earth approach. she basically picked a couple issues she cared about, hired some people to research the most effective organizations/approaches for addressing those issues, and donated to the orgs that worked the best. sounds both a lot less stressful and probably more net effective than me funding my own organization, lol.

but as for the issues i'd address, hmmm. probably something related to increasing housing supply in urban areas in the US, especially actually affordable housing for lower-income folks (which potentially would need to be a political/advocacy type thing? like, i know what the problem looks like, just don't know the best way to address it given present systems, hence hiring smart people to tell me what might work :P).

also re: teixcalaanli name.... Three Lark, or, if lark is too organic for them, Thirteen Plume (with "Feather" for a nickname). i'm predictable, lol :P (three's a favorite number, and i just plain like unlucky numbers...!)

[kradeelav]

1) the fanfic comparison to like, super technical work tickles me so much, you have no idea. :D the nuances miiiight be lost on this pea brain but ngl i can see how that could totally translate over - had an instance even just today where something wasn't making sense about how our sales department was using this weird obscure third-party-of-a-third-party app and "pulling on" that thread unwraveled a whole fun / pandora's box / 'omfg when the fuck was the last time somebody updated the designs here' rabbit hole trail. ANYWAY yeah that "pulling on a thread" feeling is *so satisfying* whether it's a fic or debugging something, here's to more chasing after it. :3

2) FE-wise i find it kind of absolutely hilarious that Awakening is the one game in the series that grinds both of our gears most in the "you had infinity POTENTIAL" sort of way. 100% agreed with the kiddos (lucina had so much more charisma than the main cast it's almost a little insulting, gah! such brave mostly successful-attempts at maturity but you still see the kid in her underneath). meanwhile I'm over here grabby-hands at the fucked up possession 'tactician as a war machine' side xD

(PS - reading through the other comments/replies here and LMAO BLESS @ your fic high being supported by, among others, one (1) slightly obsessed teen fangirl xD

3) DELIGHTFUL!!!! ngl your mentions about different birds and their attitudes has really made ... it's not deliberate birdwatching, but the ocassional 'looking at a bird on the deck' stints so much more enjoyable because you're *so right* that there's everything from sulky to pompous to ornery to .... ahhh they're delightful

4) *EVEN MORE DELIGHTFUL* :D

[lassarina]

That's definitely an issue that's on my "if I won the lottery what would I do" list! More "frivolous" causes include getting kids in underserved schools more access to books, writing classes, art classes, etc. (and just better funding for underserved schools in general; the difference between CPS schools on the south side and the north side - in the same district, even! - is sickening.)

Color me so surprised that you have a bird. XD