Ask and Answer v2

[ZaraRa]

Favourite..? That's so difficult to choose! There used to be a lovely cat called Alfie who belonged to a friend who lived three houses down the road - he was the cuddliest most affectionate cat I'd ever known. Sometimes, if I saw him outside, I'd just go out and spend time with him 
Unfortunately, he got sick some 15 years ago - rest in peace, sweet Alfie. Most affectionate kitty-cat in the whole wide world.

Question tax; What's your favourite music/song/album that sounds 'bad' to everybody else/most people?

[PotatoFur]

Dubstep and Brostep! I think that most people are off put by the intensity (or lack there of) of sounds or lack of consistency of patterns in the music, but not me! I'm not sure what it is, but I REALLY like some of the sounds those genres incorporate, and my ADHD brain probably loves how erratic they are. 

Some of my favorite Dubstep songs include Summer Dreams and Midnight Request Line by Skream! I also really like Burial's album "Untrue". Unfortunatly, there aren't really any artists that make original (some people call it "true") Dubstep anymore, mainly because of the rise of a sub-genre called Brostep (think Skrillex), so I'm usually left searching for OG Dubstep songs without much success... 

Speaking of which, some of my favorite Brostep songs include Virtual Riot's mashup titled "Idols", "Rock 'n' Roll (Will Take You to the Mountain)" by Skrillex and his remix of "What Is Light? Where Is Laughter?" by Twin Atlantic. Actually, most of the Brostep I listen to is by Skrillex pre-2012 (although I do listen to newer Brostep as well). It's probably because a lot of the sounds he used in those early songs are now lost to time (no one has figured out how to accurately recreate them yet, to my knowledge, including Skrillex himself), so it makes those tracks sound even more special and unique to my ears! 

Question: What's your favorite thing to ramble about? 

[ZaraRa]

(Tee-hee! I loved hearing that ramble.. You should pop some songs in the various song and music threads - I'd love to hear more.)
I could ramble about a lot of things... Actually, I once rambled on-and-on-and-on about the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic Echidnas for eight hours - oh, there's SO much to get into! Somebody kicked me off the other day again on them, and I just kept finding new things to start up on. "Magical fire ants -- Wait, I can explain that. So, there's this guy called Edmund... OH, DIMITRI! So there's this guy who is .. Sort of posessed by... Er... Hang on, I can explain Enerjak. So twelve chaos emeralds -- hang on, I can explain why there's twelve chaos emeralds. So the ancient ones-- Hang on, I can explai---' and then you keep coming into roadbumps, like the time Tails (yes, that two-tailed fox!) was in a, sort of, magically induced coma - and his clone was the one going to school (...) and we forget about this plotline for a-a-a-ges -- REAL-TIME? Months and months. And we find out he's not real because Knuckles is-- You know what?! I REALLY shouldn't start explaining Green Knuckles right now.. Issue 100... What a hell of a kicker. And that's only ONE thing!
...
There we go, I rambled about how I'm NOT going to ramble! Because there is so, so, so much to ramble about... Oh mah gawd...
I'm also really good at rambling about computing, music, VGM, ... Recently I've taken up rambling about MegaMan again (there's so much goodness to ramble about!)

Question Tax; What CAN'T you ramble about, that people ask you about far too often?! (I.E people always ask me to talk at length about learning Japanese.. I don't know, it's scary!)

[PotatoFur]

Anything about books I'm reading. I take a lot of time reading them and even more time to understand them (because of my short attention span and excessive craving for instant-gratification), so I rarely have a complete or even coherent picture of the contents of any books I've read. Never the less, most people in my family know that I read stuff, so they always ask about what I'm reading. That's fine and all, but the thing is, just because I've been reading Lord of the Rings for the past month does not mean that I'm any better at remembering the character names or the places they've been too then I was when you asked me 2 days ago (I've only read like 5 additional pages max since then...). 

Wait... did I just ramble about how I can't ramble about something?! 

Question: What's your favorite thing that you don't really understand (like, at all), but still enjoy anyway?

[ZaraRa]

Just about any TTRPG . . . I have no idea what is going on, I've read the rulebooks thrice  but I get invited back! Everybody is nice to me about not quite 'getting' it - I don't know, maybe my head is full of cotton wool  I get so confused and mixed around! I'm not trying! Oh, but I have fun.

Question Tax; what is something that you don't think you're very good at, but other people think you are? 

[PotatoFur]

Math. People seem to have a habit of thinking that just because I'm in a high-ish level math course (not AP just to be clear) that it somehow means that I can do math quickly. I cannot, especially without a calculator. 

Question: What's something that you NEED to take your time to do, regardless of how good you are at it?

[ZaraRa]

Knitting... I love knitting, and I can make such fantastic pieces! I just can't do it very fast - everybody who knits around me can go at a rate of knots! ... I fear I can only go at a rate of knotting my yarn up. 

Question Tax; What's a hobby you like to share with other people more than you like to do it on your own? (I.E knitting club, movie watching club)

[PotatoFur]

Playing arcade games. I don't exactly have anyone outside of my family who I can play with, but I've always found that it's way more fun whenever I play with someone than to play against bots in games like Street Fighter (I know they're bots and all, and that it's an arcade game, but there is no way they aren't hacking with how badly they destroy me lol). 

Question: What's a hobby that people around you enjoy, but that you don't really like?

[ZaraRa]

Golfing.. I just can't get into it  I can think of nothing less enjoyable than standing around in a mown grass field and knocking little golfballs around. We had a golf course attatched to the Animal college I went to, and so I played a little - I just couldn't get into it - I felt like either I was insane for not enjoying it, or all of my mates were insane -for- enjoying it 

Question Tax; What's something you'd like to learn, but you're not sure how to get into it/where to start? 

[PotatoFur]

Art, of any kind. I stopped practicing when I was in like grade 4, so my art skills are (and this not an exaggeration) worse than a elementary school kid (if you couldn't already tell based on my profile picture). It also doesn't help that I have diagnosed Dysgraphia, which severely impacts my ability to draw anything that is symmetrical (even if I'm tracing over something). 

As such, I have no idea where to start. It feels like it would take way to much of a time commitment to be even remotely realistic, especially given my current skill level..

Question: How did you learn to do something that seemed impossible to do before?

[ZaraRa]

Mine was also art...  So, well, it's a little different - I've been drawing for as long as I can remember.. But long story short, when I was young, I contracted Swine Flu, and I've been dealing with complications from that forever more  well - circa 2022, I've got these awful problems in my hands/wrists/arms that make it an absolute pain to draw - they're checking me out for arthritis, but it's likely some form of ulnar palsy they also reckon - basically, hands don't work, hands work for short bursts. I use dictation to type a lot of the time  so I was thinking - how am I ever going to draw again?! It felt hopeless for a long time, but I found that I couldn't just put Art down forever, because it made me too happy 
Well, I really like drawing.. Even though it now looked awful - seriously, I spent a few months drawing this absolutely child-like scrawls.. But I found out that I didn't care if it looks 'good', so long as I get to have fun and express myself  and through just re-learning how to draw with my condition, I've actually gotten quite good at it again.. Perhaps better than I was before? It took me a lot (A LOT) of awful art - and I often still will just draw something honestly cruddy-looking that pre-2022, I would have scoffed at and scrapped - because I like the thought of getting my ideas out - if people can tell what I've drawn, then it looking good is secondary 
Well - my avatar is my own art currently! So I'd say I've come back around.

This is one which I posted recently  which isn't bad at all - I actually really like it! But I used to be able to put out these beautiful rendered pieces in the same time that it took me to draw this one out - which used to annoy me, but now I just see the merit in this - I was able to make a few people happy with it, and I made myself happy 

So I'd actually like to give you advice on that... Does it make you happy to draw?  Does it seem fun? Getting 'good' at art is something which happens on accident..You have to learn how to have fun with it, first! It's like playing a game - I like to think of it as playing a game, at least. It makes me not care about the output so much - and then I get better just by virtue of doing it a whole lot!  You'll draw something, and you'll go, 'I wonder how to draw eyes?' and you'll look up an eye tutorial - and you'll get good at art. It's like that the whole way down, and then, one day, you'll realise somehow - you've done good! So really, the trick is just beginning, and learning to love what you draw - the rest will come naturally. 

Question Tax; What's your favourite comfort meal? I just had some beautiful eggs benedict 

[PotatoFur]

Thank you for the advice. I'll have to find time to actually draw some stuff (regardless of quality) to see if I enjoy doing it.

My favorite comfort meal? Probably a bowl of spicy noodles with a Coca-Cola Slurpee. Extremely unhealthy? Yes. Weird combination? Yes. Extremely tasty and comforting after not eating anything for the last 10 hours because of school? Yes. It's been at least a few months though since I last had it, as I've been eating healthier stuff instead! Although I would hardly consider that stuff comfort food tbh.

Question: What kind(s) of food do you eat the most?

[ZaraRa]

Maybe it's rice  if I'm honest, as I get older, I don't tend to have a lot of foods that I repeat! I do like to have a good corned beef & picallili sandwich  but I haven't had that in a while, as I've found some pork liver paté that is delicious! Even my breakfasts, I don't have the same thing!

So maybe it's rice dishes! Sticky rice, basmati, I find that rice is a common staple of my meals 
I have some weird dietary requirements, so it's whatever I can find gluten and milk free, usually 

Question Tax: What is your favourite kind of food to have on holiday?

[PotatoFur]

Hmm... cookies!

Well, that or the stuffing we always have at thanksgiving. Both are my favorites tbh.

Question: What's your LEAST favorite food to have at holiday gatherings (but will probably eat anyway because you would feel bad otherwise lol)?

[ZaraRa]

I get to luck out by having weird dietary requirements  I usually have a specially cooked meal 
Though that also means that it's kind of my least favourite food, because I hate to make a fuss - I'm having Christmas Dinner with my partner's family for the first time ever (we've been together 8 years) - and I feel so bad for adding on a whole new dish to what is already an extensive toil 

Question Tax; What's the best animal you've seen at the zoo?