#at first i wanted them cosplaying something lotr related for halloween but then i remembered my fave emo bat from childhood

[mavenne]

the princess and the bat

if you like my work and wanna support me visit my ko-fi

[maryellencarter]

What is your middle name? -- You know, about a year ago in a D&D session, I was attempting to sass the big bad (I’m much better at sass when I have time to think about it, D&D is such a time pressure that I’ve wound up playing much more of a strong silent type than I intended), and I said “Defiance is my middle name” and the DM wound up making Defiance the name of the country my character is from. Which is a delightful sort of NYC/Vegas mashup, quite different from Defiance, Ohio. ^_^ Also the capital city is called Skreuyu (pronounced, of course, Screw-you). :D

What are you passionate about? -- Dear god. What aren’t I passionate about? O_O I could attempt a brief and incomplete list, but this is a long meme anyway. ;-) Besides, you’re here, you’ll hear about it all sooner or later. XD

Zebra or leopard print? -- Either one, but only if it’s in day-glo neon rainbow colors. And not to wear, particularly. Fake-fur blankets and pillows, mostly. Lisa Frank was... a formative influence. ^_^ If I ever have money to actually decorate a place of my own, it’s gonna look very much like Wes Janson decorated it, although possibly with fewer Ewoks. (I do have a BB-8 penny bank, though.)

Do you have any fears? -- Honestly, at this exact moment, I’m too damn sleep-deprived to know. XD When I’m awake it’s probably social anxiety stuff. When I wake up at 4am tomorrow in my car, I may or may not be having the kind of weird quasi-psychotic fears that come with a certain level of sleep deprivation, where I’m suddenly convinced my laptop is going to eat me. Right now, nothing especially comes to mind.

Silver or gold? -- To wear? Gold. My skin corrodes silver. But as a color, I like silver better.

Top three places to visit? -- Ooh. Um. That I’ve been to, or not? I want to go back to Washington DC, and someday I want to be extremely sane and go back to Indiana, and someday I’d like to go back to the Black Hills and see all the geology tourism things, because the only one I saw as a kid was Mount Rushmore, which is more of a colonialism tourism thing. That I’ve not been to... Scotland, maybe? And Hawaii and Yellowstone, again for the geology nerdery? I feel like there are places I’ve very specifically wanted to go someday that I’m blanking on.

Where are you from? -- Indiana, once upon a time. Love the place, cannot deal with the people. Miss the snow. And the autumn leaves. And the library.

First career you wanted as a child? -- Paleontologist, best I can remember. Some things stay pretty constant. I don’t have the physical health to be a geologist anymore, if I ever did, but damn, I still want to take some more classes or keep up with the field somehow.

What’s your sign? -- You know, I’m not being bothered with this at the moment. I’m sure it’ll come up in a reblog pretty soon, I do those memes a lot.

Future names of your children? -- I refuse to have any. Five generations my bio-family has fucked up, all by trying too damn hard not to be their mothers. I will be a weird adopted relative and not name anybody anything.

What are you listening to right now? -- A fifteen-minute instrumental cover of “Turkey in the Straw”, to block out the myriad noises of the fast food place so I can think words. I’ve been looping it for hours and I’ll presumably be looping it for hours more.

Do you believe in fate/destiny? -- I have a lot of weird conflicting opinions about things like fate and destiny. I think if the universe is being... directed, by a god or fate or destiny or anything with intelligence or purpose, it’s an asshole and ought to be punched. It’s not actually any less depressing if the universe is being run by random chance and just happens to shake out in ways that make it seem like it’s being run by an asshole, but it’s less angering. *tries to word* I do get the feeling, the... desire for shit to have a purpose and to make sense, but a big part of me thinks that’s pareidolia or something related. It’d be nice if all this bullshit was eventually gonna shake out to me being either a stable human being or an epic hero, but I strongly doubt it. (And even if it did, a smart enough god should be able to get me there with less suffering, if it wanted to. So at minimum, if there’s a fate or god or destiny directing me, it’s either sort of incompetent, or motivated by priorities like taking the most direct route rather than minimizing the chances for me to die along the way, or it’s kind of a sadist. Sorry, I have Feelings about this one.)

Ethan, however, has a take that I think is... relevant, to the state of the world at the moment. He thinks the specifics of the world at any given time are all determined by chaos and random motion, but that there’s a cosmic balance between... stuff that’s very hard to give names to. “Good and evil” is part of it. “Order and entropy” might be a little closer. “Light and darkness”, whatever. But there’s this cosmic balance, and if, say, the Forces of Evil or whatever you want to call them... if something pushes too hard in one direction, tries to make one side win, the universe is gonna bounce back. There’s always gonna be that push-pull. Lots of people can get hurt or killed in the process, but because Ethan and I both read LOTR at formative ages, where we wind up at is the line “They cannot conquer forever”. You can’t have... you can’t get stuck. This is probably terribly Manichaean or something of us, but right now that’s the best I can word. That there’s always gonna be the thing you are Against, but there’s also always gonna be the thing you are For, even if one of them gets pretty squished for a while.

What are your career goals? -- Sometimes what you want to be when you grow up is “paid”. ;P I’d like to reach a point where I never have to ask the internet for money again, while continuing to be alive, and maybe can even give other people money. Help support my friends, travel around doing meetups, go to conventions or whatever, maybe do some cosplay. What exact job I’d be doing, Chaos only knows.

What is your favorite color? -- Blue. Royal blue, midnight blue, cobalt blue. Often with stars on.

What is your favorite flower? -- Uh. I’m gonna say these little striped white and purple crocuses that would come up through the snow in the spring? I loved those.

What was the first concert/show you attended? -- The Monkees 45th anniversary reunion concert. I said at the time that I’d blown five years of luck on the improbable string of coincidences that led to me getting there, but I’m so damn glad it happened, because I enjoyed it immensely, and Davy Jones died before what would have been their 50th. And hey, that was 2011, maybe I’m accumulating some luck again. ;-)

Something you are working on right now? -- This meme? XD In more general terms, reblobbenating some really old posts from my previous blog, as well as filling up my queue from same. It’s pretty slow going.

Have you ever had a near-death experience? -- Not the sort where you see a tunnel of light or go out of your body. Just the kind where you nearly die. :P

Are you a procrastinator or do you get things done early? -- Pfffft. Time management is something that happens to other people. ;P Occasionally I do get something done right away, but mostly it’s the night before deadline, or sometimes the night after. o_O Maybe when I have some spoons I’ll be better at that.

Left or right handed? -- Right. Very much so. My left hand is clumsy enough that I never did really get the hang of playing the piano with both hands, and I still struggle with video games that aren’t Mass Effect. (I’m good at Mass Effect because I’ve been playing it for something like five years at this point. ^_^)

TV Shows and anime you watch regularly -- Hah. I don’t watch anything regularly. I don’t even read books regularly, I go through phases where I don’t read a book for months and then suddenly I’m reading ten in a day. And I don’t do open canons, anyway; they interact badly with my particular anxieties and stress levels.

Halloween costume idea for this year? -- I generally default to a cowboy or a pirate. I also have a witch hat now. But I might come up with something else. Living in an apartment complex, though, there will be no trick-or-treaters, so unless I wind up working somewhere that does Halloween costumes, the point is rather moot.

What is your relationship status? -- Single, aromantic, have never dated anyone, would rather like a primary relationship at some point but that’s an issue for when I can support myself. :P

Last movie you just watched? -- I genuinely don’t know. Probably Black Panther? No, that was like February. Hot Fuzz?

A song that’s been stuck in your head? -- This very seldom happens to me. I think the last one was Janice Buckner’s “Strange Friends”, a little-known ‘80s children’s song, of which I can remember neither the tune nor the lyrics. Usually I can at least remember the lyrics even if I don’t know what tune they went to.

A book you want to read/have recently read? -- Erm. I just reread Aaron Allston’s X-wing books, if you can call it rereading when I was mostly skimming looking for good tumblr URLs (I found a lot, but none that felt like me). I’m not really in a reading phase at the moment, so.