kyuuketsukirui

Oh hey, it's that interview meme again. Does this thing ever stop going around? You know the drill. If you want me to ask you questions, just say so. These are from vixalicious.

1. What draws you to a particular fandom?
I'm really not sure. In every "main" fandom I've been involved in, it's been something totally different. I got involved in Digimon because I was translating the show and thought it was awesome. I started searching out Vampire Chronicles fic because I'd just reread the books for the first time in over a decade and remembered how much I loved them. And this time instead of just having a couple people in my class to talk to about it with, there was the whole internet! I got sucked into RPS and the Establishment because all my friends were doing it and even though I had no interest in writing about celebrities or writing collaboratively in an RPG setting, somehow I did. For like FIVE YEARS. I started writing Harry Potter fic because I got assigned HP for remix one year and loved the fic I wrote and realised I had a bunch more ideas. I started writing LotRiPS because of almostnever and anatsuno's Dom and Elijah, and because of all my other friends who were so into it that even though I had no interest in the guys and hadn't ever watched the DVD extras I had all this knowledge via osmosis. I got into Stargate: Atlantis because it was huge and I wanted to participate in the fandom. And AUs were all the rage and I love AUs. There have been other minor fandoms here and there. Star Wars, Sky Captain, Supernatural, etc. (What is it with the letter S?) But of the ones I have been active in the most, as you can see, it's really no one thing.

2. Do you want kids ever?
No. I grew up around kids and babies all the time. My mom ran a daycare in our home until I was eighteen, and I did a lot of babysitting myself as well, and I liked kids a lot and totally thought I wanted some myself. As I got older, I got more and more set in my ways and realised I really didn't want to have to be responsible for a child or to change my life to accomodate someone other than me and Bruce. I'm too selfish. And I'm too inflexible if it turned out the kid was really different from me or was very difficult. Also the older I got, the more it went from theoretical to really contemplating the thought of pregnancy as something actually happening to me, which kind of disgusts and frightens me. If I were ever to have kids at this point, it would be adoption for sure, though I doubt I will change my mind.

3. What do you think people find most surprising about you, in particular if it's someone you met online then in real life?
I know you all imagined I looked like Ewan McGregor and were disappointed when I didn't. It's okay. I am, too.

Seriously, though, I don't know? I never thought I was surprising to anyone. I'm pretty much what you see is what you get. XD

4. If you could live anywhere else except where you live now, where would it be?
San Francisco bay area is my top choice, and probably the only place outside of LA in the US that I'd really like to live. And honestly, I don't know about any other countries, either. I've never been anywhere other than Japan, so I can't really say. As for Japan, idk. I'm really not keen on the climate. And I have practical concerns, such as Bruce not speaking Japanese.

5. What era would you like to have been born in?
I'm pretty happy with when I was born, actually. History is all well and good in fiction, but it pretty much sucked in actuality. There's no ~*~romance~*~ to having no rights and having to shit in an outhouse, you know?


Hmm. There was a Christmas meme I was going to do, too, but I can't remember where I saw it, so you're SPARED.

I saw this on Overheard in New York today:

Six-year-old camper #1: I'm half Jewish and half Irish!
Six-year-old camper #2: I'm half Finnish and half Polish!
Six-year-old camper #3: I'm a quarter sign-language!

And I totally sympathise with Camper #3, because that's so something I would have said as a kid.

When I was about four, my mom got off the phone with my aunt and told me my cousin Sean had broken his arm at camp and I immediately burst into tears because I thought she meant his arm had broken off.

When I was around eight, my mom asked me if I wanted to have bangs. I didn't understand that you could just brush some of the hair forward and cut it short, and was imagining somehow cutting hair from the back or something and then taping it on over my forehead to make bangs. So of course I told her no.

Around the same age or maybe a year older, me and a bunch of other kids were carpooling to AWANA and someone asked everyone if they had an innie or an outie. I had never heard those terms for bellybuttons before, but outie is a homonym of Audi, the type of car my neighbors had, so even though I'd never heard of a car called an innie, I assumed they must be talking about cars and said we had an Oldsmobile.

When I was in kindergarten a boy in my class asked me if I had a pussy or a dick, and since we had a cat at the time, I said pussy.

I know there were many (oh so many) more times like this, because it took me a long time to get the hang of "not literal" (and of making weird assumptions when I didn't know what people were talking about), but those are the first ones that come to mind.

So how about you? Were you really literal? Did you jump to weird conclusions?

anthimaeria gave me the year 1994. If you want a year, too, just ask.

In 1994 I graduated from high school (obviously the first half of that year was spent in high school, but I can't remember doing anything particularly interesting; I have a general impression that I was apathetic towards everything but yearbook, which I loved (and was in my third year as editor), and skipped classes a lot while still managing to get all As, since everything was so easy). We went to Disneyland for Grad Night, and I guess not many other schools graduated that exact day, because it wasn't that crowded, which was cool. The stupid thing was, though, that Disneyland has rules for Grad Night (or did then) that you have to dress up. I mean...wtf? Who wants to be traipsing around Disneyland all night in fancy clothes? FTF.

Over the summer, my mom began looking for work outside the home for the first time since I was born. All my life she had run a daycare in our home, but now that I was out of school, she was looking for an office job. She had worked at the county clerk's office before I was born, but obviously that was eighteen years ago, so she was worried she wouldn't be able to find anything, but after temping a bit as a receptionist/secretary at the law firm where my aunt was a legal secretary, she was able to get a receptionist job at another law firm (where she worked until May of last year when the firm dissolved).

That fall I started at Santa Monica College, which is literally just across the street from my house and very convenient. I could come home between classes! (Even better, I could come home and there were no babies in our house, which as much as I liked the babies my mom watched, was definitely a nice change.) That first semester I took pre-calculus (I had taken trig/pre-calc in 11th grade, but nothing in 12th, so felt I needed a refresher), Japanese 1, and two other classes I can't remember (I think one may have been something Englishy and one an intro to computer programming class).

I fell in love with Japanese right away. I can't remember my teacher's name (Japanese 2 was Kimura-sensei and 3 and 4 were Fujiwara-sensei), but he was great, and it was the start of me being the teacher's pet for a whole long line of Japanese teachers (Kimura-sensei even bought me manga after the semester was over). Whatever his name was, I loved how he made us learn hiragana and katakana. There was nothing wishy-washy about him. We made flash cards and drilled, and had tests where you had to do the flash cards and identify 60 (or more) in 60 seconds, and anyone who couldn't do it had to drop the class. This was all before the last day to drop came up, so basically within the first few weeks of class we were expected to be able to read both hiragana and katakana. I am always thankful to him for doing it that way, because it really got them into my head right away and got them in good.

That's about all I can remember from '94... I may have gone to Erin's that summer, but I went lots of summers, and they all kind of blend together.

Hey, it's that interview meme again. Comment and let me know if you want me to ask you five questions.

Here are five from painless_j: ( Click! )

*

We went to Mitsuwa yesterday and I went in the bookstore just to check if there was a new Nana out yet. I did not mean to buy anything else!

But...I did. ;_; There was no new Nana, but I did see a new Ppoi! It's been *checks Amazon* damn, three and a half years since the last volume! I'm glad she's finally back to it. So then since I was already for sure buying one book, I looked around a bit more. Saw they had Fruits Basket 23, and I figured why not. I really want to read the last volume and finish the series, but I've been waiting forever for it at the used store and they never ever have it, so... Then I saw there was a new 7 Seeds, which is like my current favorite manga by a long shot, so I had to get that.

Then I saw a manga that I had to get just for the cover. It's made to look like an old book, with wear on the edges and everything. It's called The Black Museum Springald and is by Fujita Kazuhiro, the author of Ushio to Tora, which is probably not a series familiar to many anymore, but it was one of the few anime released in the US back in the early '90s.

Anyway, not only does this have an awesomely cool cover, but it's set in Victorian England and based on the legend of Spring Heeled Jack. It's only a stand-alone, unfortunately, but it looks pretty cool. I'm looking forward to reading it.

*

I'm working on my plans for 14valentines. Still not sure exactly how many recs I want to aim for per day. I guess it will partly be determined by how many fics I can read between now and then. XD I have a whopping nine recs set aside so far, from the past few weeks of reading. I am going to have to not read anything but potential 14valentines recs from now on, though.

I also decided I would compile a list of all the female-centric fics I'd recced in the past, and I got that together today and it ended up being enough for three posts, and I have a fic I want to finish writing for one day, and I hope to get my master list of transfic finished for another day, so that means I only need nine days worth of new recs. Still a lot, but more manageable.

*

theninth mentioned that bironic does a "memory fest" where they post a memory each day in January. I really like that idea, so I'm going to snag it and try to post a memory of mine each day for the rest of the month.

( 1. Cinco de Mayo )

Oh, hai. I just realised I had some of these interview meme questions I still hadn't answered.

( Three sets of five )

I forgot I had these piling up. You know the drill. Comment if you want me to ask you questions. No fair commenting again if I've asked you already within the past few weeks.

Unrelatedly, I think I shall use babb_chronicles icons for the rest of my posts this week, in anticipation of the Potterpocalypse.

Questions from telesilla:

( Read more... )

Questions from mikotokun:

( Read more... )

Questions from diamona:

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Questions from helens78:

( Read more... )

There was one of those interview memes again. You know the drill. Comment if you want me to ask you questions. (Alternatively, comment and ask me questions; I'm always more keen to talk about myself than to ask others questions. XD)

Questions from morgan_c_hoax:

( Read more... )

Questions from theninth:

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Questions from bibliotech:

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Questions from bexone:

( Read more... )

I feel like a fucking zombie, man. :( I slept nine hours, but I don't really feel rested. I think I don't sleep as well in the afternoon, but that's when I've been sleeping all this week so far (Sunday it was because of morning errands, Monday because of the barking dog, Tuesday I don't remember, and this morning I went to breakfast with my mom). I'm gonna try and go to bed earlier tomorrow morning, even if I'm not that tired, because I hate being on this schedule.

Speaking of zombies, just because it was the zombiepocalypse today, don't forget to take my lyrics quiz. (Assuming you're still alive, that is.)

And now for some memes.

( About my username, journal title, default icon, etc. )

( 51 random questions )

In a previous post, almostnever said, "Abstraction and generalization seems kind of problematic for you, like it's just not compatible with the way you think."

And I just...yes. Yes, exactly. I think I've said the same before, but today I hit upon a really perfect illustration of it.

Do you remember those Magic Eye pictures that were so popular in the early '90s? It feels like everyone else can just automatically look at this thing, whatever it is, be it a group or genre or whatever other concept is made up of a bunch of small things, everyone else looks at it and they can see the picture in it. All the individual slashers add up to a picture of Slashers and all the individual women add up to a picture of Women and all the individual sci-fi books add up to Sci-Fi, etc.

And I can't. Believe me, I've tried. I'm always seeing the dots and not the picture. Even when I know that's not what I'm supposed to do, when I know it's a generalisation and not meant to be everyone (like the picture is not all the dots on the page, just some of them), I keep coming back to the individual dots.

My experience and his experience and hers and theirs will never add up to ours to me, and if you tell me person A's experience, I don't automatically extrapolate to there being other people with that experience unless you tell me about B and C and D.

And in the end, whether it's because I can't understand it or not, I don't know, but the whole, the generalisation, just doesn't interest me. What A woman or A man or A llama does, but not what Women or Men or Llamas do. (And even as I wrote that I thought, but what about the llamas who don't!? So yes, I think it is inextricably connected.)

I don't know why I'm typing this. I know I frustrate people sometimes, and I don't particularly mean to, but I found it interesting when we had the discussion on how people read or think, so here's another example and maybe it will be interesting to you, too.

fabu linked to this article a few days ago and I've been meaning to talk about it ever since and seem to never get around to it.

But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’ ” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t.

I never really thought about it before, but that's me. It's totally me.

( Cut for a ridiculous amount of self-absorption )

On a totally different note, these are the most hilarious icons I've seen in ages. It's a pic of Dan Rad's ass from Equus, posed with a variety of shocked HP characters. My favorites are the Dursleys, Ron, and Draco, though honestly, it's really hard to choose. I laughed so hard I hurt.

Hey, it's one of those interview memes. Comment if you want me to ask you five questions. Meanwhile, here are five questions norah asked me.

( Babble babble )

1. I love the smell we get when we turn the heater on for the first time after summer. It's just burning dust bunnies, but it's the smell of winter to me. Sadly, last winter, when I went to turn it on, I found it wasn't working at all. I have no idea what the problem is; the pilot light is still on, so it's not that. Since it really only heats the living room and not the whole house, and we're never in the living room, it's not really a big deal. I can get warmer more easily with the little electric heater by my desk. But I miss the smell. :(

2. I have a love/hate relationship with sleeping. I always feel guilty about sleeping, because I have so much stuff I should be doing, and so I often only sleep 5, 6, 7 hours, even though I need more. >_< But I really love sleeping. I love being bundled up in a bunch of blankets.During winter, I love sleeping during the day with the sun shining on me. I love lying in bed dozing. If I wouldn't feel horribly guilty about it, I could just doze all day.

3. I've always loved music, but I never listened to any secular music until I was ten, when one of the people my mom babysat for (she ran a daycare in our home) gave me a little walkman-type radio for Christmas (no casette player, but that was okay, cause I didn't have any tapes, just records). Before that, I would sing hymns to myself or praise songs (this was before the huge boom in praise music, but there was still some of that stuff in the 70s and early 80s) and my mom had albums of Christian singers, including one very early Amy Grant album, which I loved. I also had some Christian kids albums featuring Psalty the Singing Songbook. Oh, I also had my beloved Annie album and knew lots of songs from other musicals. Because my mom only listened to Christian music, I'm pretty clueless about the Beatles and all the 60s/70s music that most people my age heard their parents listening to.

4. I have...not a stutter as you typically think of it, I'm not quite sure how to describe it. But I sometimes can't get out the next word I want to say (not the same as forgetting a word, but just being unable to get it out) and keep repeating the previous words/sentence over and over. The more agitated I get, the harder it is to get the word out. In the end, I sometimes have to just describe the word.

5. From kindergarten all the way through high school, I never talked to my school friends outside of school. The only exceptions I can think of is in first grade, I had two friends, Leah Rothstein and Marie Roche, and I played at their houses maybe once or twice each. In high school I occasionally talked to Yash on the phone, but that's it. Outside of school, I had a few neighborhood kids I played with when I was little, and in high school I hung out with my cousin Stephen during the summer when he was staying with my aunt and uncle (he was just my aunt's step-son and normally he lived with his mom). I played with him when we were little, too, but in high school he was pretty much the only person I hung out with, except for the few weeks a year I went to visit Erin in Virginia or she came out here. And in 11th or 12th grade, I became really good friends with this girl Shelley from my church and we started hanging out on weekends. Most of my time was just spent doing solitary stuff like riding my bike, reading, or playing Nintendo.

6. For about ten years or so, I read sci-fi and fantasy (mainly the latter) almost exclusively. The reason for this was not that I liked it any better, but because otherwise the bookstore/library was too overwhelming and I couldn't choose anything. This started just after I got really too old to be using the children's section, and the YA section was pretty sparse and not terribly interesting. I remember for a while limiting myself to just paperbacks at the library by my school (Yash and I went there almost every day after school from 7th to 12th), but their paperback section was reeeeeally small, so that didn't last very long. Then I discovered fantasy books (I had already read quite a few, including Tolkien, but this was the first time I realised there was actually a genre for books like this and many bookstores had separate sections), starting with The Sword of Shannara. Now I had a nice, small section to limit myself to, but it was still large enough to have a lot of variety. Then when I started learning Japanese, I got into manga, and that was a new small section I could limit myself to, and I basically read almost only manga for several years (with some fantasy and sci-fi as well). Eventually, with the internet and Amazon and people on LJ talking about books, I made the switch to mainstream lit. As I got older, and especially once I started writing myself, my tolerance for bad writing plummeted, which means most genre fiction isn't an option. I still can't just go to a library or bookstore and browse the shelves. It's too much. I usually have a specific list of titles I want to read, and just get those. If I do browse, it's the new books section, which is small enough for me to handle.

Cause you've all been dying to know, I'm sure.

1. I didn't learn to drive until I was in my early twenties.

TRUE. I didn't learn to drive until Bruce and I bought our first car, a year or so after we'd been married, so I was 22 or 23. The only reason I did then was because I had better credit and so the car was in my name and they wouldn't sell it to me unless I had at least a learner's permit. Now I love driving and hate being a passenger (the loss of control drives me crazy), so I'm glad I did.

2. I've lived in the same house all my life.

TRUE. A lot of people guessed this as the lie. It's pretty unbelievable, I guess. We never moved when I was growing up, and I didn't go away to college or anything. Then my mom got married just a month before Bruce and I did and she moved in with her new husband, so Bruce and I (he was already living here, too) didn't even have to go anywhere, we just kept this house.

I think the longest I've been away from home is three weeks one time when we went to visit Bruce's folks.

So moving up to the Bay Area will be a Big Thing for me. Not only the first time living away from LA, but even the first time not living in this house. I really can't even imagine it

3. I have been paid to write.

TRUE. Not fiction, but I did get paid $1500 to write two articles for a Digimon magazine back in the heyday of my Digimon site.

4. The first fanfic I read was Sith Academy (The Phantom Menace).

TRUE. Several people guessed this one as the lie, too (people who knew the thing about the house was true). I have no idea what fic it was or who it was by, but it was Maul/Obi humor fic, so I'm 99% sure it was something Sith Academy.

I knew about fanfic already, but had no interest in it and I wasn't actually searching for fanfic when I read it. When TPM came out I was all about Darth Maul. Seriously. He was (and is) so fucking cool. I had no idea who Ewan was (aside from being That Trainspotting Guy, but I hadn't seen Trainspotting, either) and did not find him especially attractive, so really all I cared about was Maul.

Anyway, I was probably just googling for Darth Maul and this fic came up. I read it. It was something about them in a speeder (or whatever they drive in). It was okay? Maybe? Wasn't horribly written or anything. It certainly did nothing to change my eh feeling about fanfic. :p

I think the next thing I read was some Digimon, Taichi/Yamato. I think it was crackfic by ruaki which involved Yamato being a Magical Girl. And then I read some more Digimon fanfic when I had the section for it on my site, but most of the submissions were horrible Mary Sues and I eventually closed it down. :p

Then in February of 2002, I saw Queen of the Damned and reread the books and for the first time found myself wanting to read fanfic...

5. The earliest thing I can remember is my 4th birthday party.

FALSE. No one guessed this! I can remember quite a few things before that, and I think the earliest is the Christmas I was two and a half. There was a very traumatic incident involving me losing a couple of pieces of my brand new Mickey Mouse Colorforms between the brick steps at my great-aunt's house. Apparently the trauma burned the events of the day in my mind.

6. I am an only child and an only grandchild.

TRUE. Technically I have two "step-sisters", but I don't really think of them that way since my mom got remarried when I was already an adult and Stephani and Michelle both live up north, so I've only met them once at my mom & Tom's wedding.

For much of my life (from about age 8 to 22), my aunt had a step-son who I thought of as my cousin Stephen, but he didn't live with them and once my aunt got divorced, he's not kept in touch with the family except a Christmas card or two to my grandparents. My other aunt never had any kids (though she's planning to get remarried to a guy who has a couple of grown kids) and my uncle died when he was nineteen, so I'm the only grandchild there. As a kid, I could have wished for more cousins to play with (I played with Stephen a lot whenever he was around, but that was only on alternate holidays and some time during the summer), but as an adult it has its benefits in that my grandparents treat me equally with my mom and aunts in matters of Christmas money, etc.

Well, my plan was foiled. This always happens. When I want to stay up, I'm dead tired, and when there's no reason to stay up all night, I'm totally perky.

I had meant to stay up all night last night so that I would go to bed very early tonight and thus be rested and ready to get up and drive to SF early in the morning. Well, I ended up going to sleep at 6.30. :( Then my plan was to just sleep a couple hours and get up. I usually have to pee like five billion times when I'm sleeping (I would say during the night, but er, I don't sleep at night), especially in this hot weather when I'm drinking like six liters of water a day. But of course today I did not get up to pee and in fact slept six hours straight and woke up a bit after noon.

Doh.

I am still going to make myself go to bed early tonight, though that may be more like midnight or one than the ten or eleven I was hoping for.

I had something else to say, but forgot it. Oh! Yesterday Bruce went to Target and they had the orange Mounds bars on clearance. He bought like twenty of them.

Also on Ces's anti-rec, we have decided to skip the Gilroy festival. We had already been having second thoughts because of the heat, so we've just decided Bruce will cook a garlicky dinner Saturday night.

This morning I had a "doh" moment when I realised a plothole in my fqf fic, so I need to rewrite a bit. I have 1000 words currently and he's not even met Dom yet. This is definitely going to be my longest LotRiPS fic so far. I'm still a bit unsure as to the whole taking Dom back for Hannah's wedding thing. I keep hoping I'll be inspired by the time I get there.

I've been playing Super Metroid the past few days and am awash in nostalgia. I am also awash in annoyance as I played through to a certain point and then even with looking at the guidebook, I couldn't figure out how the hell I was supposed to proceed. I figured I had missed some important item back in the beginning, and since I was in a place where I couldn't go back because the only way back up is to have an item I don't have yet, I started the game over. Turns out I didn't miss anything, though I still don't know how to proceed. At least it took me a lot shorter time to get where I was the second time through. The first time I was still getting used to the game since it's been like ten years since I played it.

Anyway! Memes.

Five statements are true and one is a lie. Guess which one is a lie. I'll reveal the answers later.

1. I didn't learn to drive until I was in my early twenties.

2. I've lived in the same house all my life.

3. I have been paid to write.

4. The first fanfic I read was Sith Academy (The Phantom Menace).

5. The earliest thing I can remember is my 4th birthday party.

6. I am an only child and an only grandchild.

Whew! That was really hard and I considered giving up many times (as so often happens with memes).

And now, the name meme.

1. Are you named after anyone? If so, explain.

Sort of, but not really. My great-grandmother's name is Grace, but that's not why I was named that. My mom wanted Elizabeth, but one of her friends who was pregnant at the same time had her baby first and named her that, so my mom chose something else. She wanted a Biblical name and ended up with Grace. So it's really just coincidence that it's the same as my great-grandma's.

There are no traditions of naming people after others in my family, thank God. No offense to people who are into that, but I think it's one of the stupidest practices ever, especially when people complain that they "have to" do it. (I mean, if you do it because you want to, fine, but if you feel forced into it because of some tradition, then it's just stupid.) While we're on the subject of name things I think are dumb, I think worrying about a surname dying out is stupid, too. Who cares? I just don't get the weight people attach to these things.

2. Do you have your children's names picked out already? If so, is there any significance?

At this point, I doubt we'll have kids, but I've always liked names. At various points in my life I've had lists of names I like, not just for kids, but for characters, too.

If I were to have kids now, I like Emily for a girl. It's really the only girl's name I can think of that I like.

For boys, the names I like most are Julien, Paris, Sebastien, Adrien, Alasdair, Noel, Asher, Evan, Raphael, and Lucien.

There is no significance. They just sound good. I like names that end in -en.

I also like a lot of Japanese boy's names, but I would never name my kid that because it will never sound right in English.

3. If you were born a member of the opposite sex what would your name have been?

Travis. I really like this name.

4. If you could re-name yourself what name would you pick and why?

I don't particularly like my name, but as you may have noticed above, there aren't exactly a bunch of girl's names I'm hugely fond of, so...

5. Are there any mispronunciations/typos that people do with your name constantly?

Nope. It's pretty easy to spell and pronounce. When talking with people, I tend to get people who hear Chris instead of Grace fairly often, though.

I've probably posted something like this before, but this is the whole "how I got into fandom" essay, prompted by a post on non_txt.

( LONG )

almostnever mentioned she'd been playing with the Sims all day, but hadn't actually been playing the game at all, just customising and building houses and all that stuff. To which I replied:

About setting stuff up and never playing the game, that describes my entire childhood! Like, with doll houses, playing with them involved taking out all the furniture and then rearranging the rooms and putting the dolls in. I'm pretty sure that for some (most?) kids, there would actually be some playing with the dolls as well, but I just loved setting stuff up. Same with Lego, Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, etc. I'd build stuff and take it apart, build it and take it apart. Or all my little Disney figures I collected, I'd like them up just right and then put them back in their jar, then take them out another day and line them up again.

...Possibly I was a strange child.

Now I've remembered another of my favorites, too. At my grandparents' house was a whole closet full of Hot Wheels that had been my uncle's. My great-grandma worked for many years at Matel, so they got all the toys cheap and thus had tons. Anyway, whenever I was over there, my cousin Stephen and I would set up tracks all over the whole room. I did like actually playing with the cars once we were set up, too, but for me the real fun was in designing the tracks.

Looking back on how I used to entertain myself, almost everything (aside from a few things like drawing, riding my bike, etc.) is either setting stuff up or sitting in front of the set-up stuff and making up stories about it in my head (which did not actually involve moving anything around, just thinking about it).

A lot of toys, I'm not even sure what the "point" is, i.e. how you're actually supposed to play with them. I mean, dolls, for example. For me, playing with dolls involved setting up a house and then sitting there thinking about orphans (Annie played a very influential role in my childhood). Or setting up my Ewok Village and thinking about Return of the Jedi (or possibly those terrible made-for-TV Ewok movies I loved so much), that sort of thing. There wasn't actually much contact with the dolls themselves.

What I said above about being a strange child probably still holds true. ^_^;; So how did you play with toys? Or if you have kids, what do they do with them? I probably ought to know this in case I ever write kids playing with stuff...

Yes, I'm procrastinating on all sorts of things. Why do you ask?

( 25 questions about high school )

( 25 more questions )

Or something like that. I've seen this all over my flist, and it looks pretty cool. So these are things that I don't really know if I assume you know, but they're, I guess, things that you might pick up on if you read my journal, or things that seem important to know about me...

1. I like talking about myself. This is, in fact, why I'm doing this meme. And why I have a journal. I never kept a diary as a kid, though I got a couple for Christmas here and there. Inevitably I'd write one entry and get bored, and the reason I got bored is because there was no point! I still don't see the point of private entries on LJ, because there's no one reading. I am always conscious of an audience when I write in my journal. Actually, I love talking period, and I love discussion. I spend way too much time reading and replying to posts on metafandom for my own good.

( As per #1, this gets rambly... )

ETA BONUS TRACK: Because I knew I'd forget major things when I was writing this and only remember later...

11. Audience is very important to me. I've seen a couple good essays on different types of writers, and one of the ones I thought was best was about storytellers vs. catharctic writers (I believe it was by minisnoo). I'm definitely a storyteller. For me there is no point in writing if there's not someone there to read the story. This doesn't mean that I tailor my writing to the audience or only write what I think people will want to read. It means I write the stories I want to tell, and then I post them and hope that someone else wants to read them. But without the internet, I never would have started writing, because there was no audience.