FanFic Ask Me Anything ~*~ Version 3.0 Daily Questions (See list on pg 164 or 1)

What do you find so daunting about playing video games? About computers in general?

(I can go over some stuff via PM if you'd like)

 

Favorite version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

 

Have you read the first Young Jedi Knights book – Heirs of the Force? It has a scene in it that I think you as a foodie would like: the time we see the dining hall where all the different jedi students eat all manner of different kinds of food.


Please choose:
(a) an alien race in the GFFA; and then
(b) a food style or a dish from a/some real-life culture/s (or time period, or both) that you think would be well-suited to that alien race.

 

Do you like water sports: skiing, sailing, swimming, or snorkeling?

 

Do you think Findswoman should catch up on her diary reading?

 

What I find interesting about the Chiss as a reader is that, even when they're presented as the good guys, they're so haughty and arrogant and xenophobic that they're not very likable. I also find that their way of adhering to strict rules even when trying to get around them or inciting others to break them (in OF or SQ) makes for good plots. As for Thrawn, he's - by far - my favourite EU villain. He's a smart villain, not just an evil one; and the fact that he relies on the analysis of art is a good pretext for some more sophistication about alien cultures. I'll add here that I'm one of the (apparently few) people who enjoyed his backstory and his transformation from a noble, high-minded officer in OF to a ruthless GA in TTT. I see it as Thrawn turning to the Dark Side in his own way, and it was a smart trick on Zahn's behalf to include that theme in his story.

Writing Thrawn is a different story. The more I work on my fic, the more I realize that choosing him as the main canon character was a very stupid idea. With the exception of two, very short scenes in COO, there's absolutely zilch in EU literature about what he would be like in a private setting talking to someone he actually cares about on a personal level, so I don't have much of a point of reference for the characterization and I'm realizing that I made my life a lot more difficult with that choice. And every time I try to go back to Zahn's books, there's the fact that he always shows Thrawn through another character's POV, whereas I went for an external narrator, and that's not helpful either. But now I got started, so I guess I'll have to accept the consequences On a more positive note, Thrawn's status as the only non-human in the Fleet and his obsession with information-gathering make for interesting themes and plot points, so I'm going to stop complaining and enjoy what I'm doing

I'm uncomfortable with computers because I don't really understand how they work I started using a computer pretty late, and the least I can say is that they're not really omnipresent in the world where I live (only 50% of households in this country are even connected to the internet, and the judiciary, like many public administrations, still do everything on paper!), so I learned to do things mechanically and I panic when something changes. Transitioning from Microsoft Word 2000 to Word 2007 took me ages because the commands weren't where I expected them to be. And if you put me in front of a Mac, I'm done for. So yeah, video games... it feels a bit like learning a new language, you know?

I might take you up on that, actually.

You mean Χελωνονιντζάκια? The only version I know are the comics, we used to buy them in the newspaper kiosks when I was a kid. The cartoons came to Greece with many years of delay, and initially on a TV channel for which the broadcast signal was very weak in my area, so I never really got to watch them. As for the video games, see above

I find Goodwood's insistence that people should play KOTOR very sweet, and coming from someone with so many qualities, there's got to be something to it.

All of Gamiel's questions are thought-provoking (and now that I'm trying to answer them, I'm realizing that they're not easy at all) but the best one is the one about food below

I read that ages ago, but can you believe I have no memory of that scene whatsoever? I need to read it again! Did you read the Tales from Jabba's Palace? The story about his chef is hilarious, and Max Rebo has got to be the ultimate SW foodie.

Okay, now you're sending my hyper-excited neurons in overdrive I can picture Hutts (especially the sybarite type Findswoman created for the edited challenge) having Lebanese mezze. I can also imagine the Talz slurping spaghetti through their proboscis in true Lady-and-the-Tramp fashion. Oh, and Gamorreans in just about any three-Michelin-star restaurant Also, Biths eating sashimi and/or French nouvelle cuisine, and the Anzati we see in the cantina in ANH enjoying a glass of very fine, smoked whiskey along with his hookah.

I spend my summer holidays in the sea - not by the sea, in the sea - so swimming, obviously, yes! I greatly, greatly enjoy the sensation of my body being a lot lighter than it is; I feel like my vertebrae are snapping back in place and it helps me sleep like a baby at night. The thing is that I'm not a very good swimmer, because I learned by doing, so I can't swim in sweet water, I feel like I'm drowning. I went once to the Red Sea in Egypt with my cousins, and that gives an entire new meaning to the word "snorkeling" with all the colourful fish and the coral reefs. In the Mediterranean there isn't much to see. I never went sailing or water-skiing. I'd like to try sailing, but not water-skiing. It's just too loud and that's very annoying when you're sitting and relaxing on the beach

There's obviously a joke I'm missing here, can someone please explain?

 

I was teasing Findswoman about her lack of a reply to second-most recent entry in my DDC '14 thread, that's all.

And now for something completely different...

...do you have any interesting hobbies besides writing and food?

 

Please choose:
(a) an culture in the GFFA; and then
(b) a food style or a dish from a/some real-life culture/s (or time period, or both) that you think would be well-suited to that culture.

Finaly somebody who say the comic

Glad to be thought-provoking

I have not, it is on my reading list but so is much other stuff

That's some nice ideas

 

Let's talk alkyhall. Specifically, let's talk beer and other malt liquors. Any favorites?

 

That's the sort of teasing I'll stay away from. I'm still a lurker at heart and I'm about 200 years late on reviewing the fics I'm reading

I'm a voracious reader. I read everything, fiction, non-fiction, poetry. To me nothing compares to reading a good book, and reading a great book is a near-mystical experience. It's like touching the writer's soul. I was lucky to read a few of those truly great books in my life, where I felt that I had changed after finishing them, and now I'm like a junkie, reading everything I can get my hands on to repeat that experience.

In terms of sports, there aren't so many options in Athens other than the gym, but when in the countryside I like to go trekking and mountaineering.

Another hobby I had at the time of the fat cows was going to the theatre and to concerts, but it doesn't come cheap and I had to cut down on that since the crisis started. What I do now is, whenever possible, to go to the dress rehearsals instead. I don't know if that's an option in your countries; here most national theatres will allow the audience in the dress rehearsal for a nominal amount of money. Instead of going to concerts or to operas, I go to small cafés or restaurants where they play live Greek music.

You're welcome

I have a study at home and I'm not allowed to write anywhere else because that study is not adorned with objets d'art or pretties but with total chaos Mr Chyntuckopoulos does not, repeat not, like chaos, so I have my own little room with a desk that's collapsing under piles of books, papers, newspapers, empty Kleenex boxes, overflowing ashtrays, pebbles I picked on the beach and every single other object you can imagine (no suspicious dirty cups though, I like my chaos but I want it to be clean). There's also a big bookcase that ran out of space years ago (cue piles of books on the floor) and a very ugly but comfortable little sofa so that I can take the laptop on my knees from time to time. I avoid bringing work at home as much as I can, so it's the writing room. I lock the door and enjoy the silence while I write.

For some reason I can't really define, the Corellians' never-tell-me-the-odds thing always made me associate them with southern Italy, so I imagine them eating Neapolitan pizza with olives and anchovies And for a totally unrelated reason that I can't define either, I imagine the Naboo feasting on Italian gastronomy - not pasta and pizza, but Italian haute cuisine.

Yay, alkyhall! I don't drink beer because I don't like the bubbles, but in the malt category I do drink whiskey. I'm a snob, so I don't like the Johnny Walker sort, but if I can get my hands on Lagavulin or Laphroaig I'm a happy person. We've been talking about this for years, and now we postponed it to "after the crisis", but some day Mr Chyntuckopoulos and I are going to go to Scotland to take the distillery tour (and then probably spend months in hospital with cirrhosis, but I'm sure it's worth it.)

Nooo, unfortunatelyyyyy I'm sure it's amazing; many known absinthe drinkers were people of quality after all There's a Greek drink called tsipouro that's kind of related to absinthe. It's a very strong liquor made from the pulp of grapes after you press them for wine and it can be flavoured with a number of herbs, usually aniseed (not unlike ouzo) but also mastic and a variety of other things. In rural areas where they have a local production, it's usually very pleasant dynamite

 

Have you come up with any personal cultural points regarding the chiss? Fort examples regarding food, clothes, music, food, architecture, entertainment, food, etc.

 

Did you notice how Gamiel mentioned "food" thrice in his last question?

On an unrelated note, have you ever gone or do you want to ever try sailing?

 

What do you see yourself doing career-wise 5 years from now? Same thing or something totally different? How far is your current career from your "dream job" growing up?

 

For some reason I can't remember (probably to explain the number of apostrophes) I decided that Cheunh was an agglutinative language, but as I saw just now when looking up the correct term in English, it wasn't a very original idea, since it appears that many constructed languages (including Klingon) are agglutinative.

I also had plans at one point for a scene with Chiss war dances. I dropped the idea, but what I had in mind was a slightly more martial/Cossack version of pentozali (video below) because I thought that the principle of dancing in a row and taking turns to perform acrobatic steps matched the primacy of the community over the individual in Chiss culture.

Did he? Geez, I really need to consult an ophthalmologist

I haven't, which is kinda stupid when you live by the sea, isn't it? I'd like to try, and, to confess my lifetime dream, what I'd really want is to sail on a dhow, because they're so pretty and they're in the Indian Ocean

Oh, I'm pretty sure I'll be doing the same thing in one form or another in 5 or 10 or 20 years. I wouldn't mind being a bit better paid, but since I work for chronically underfunded NGOs that's not likely to happen. I also wouldn't mind if there were less cases to deal with. The good news is that we won't have this crappy government forever, so when the good guys come to power, I might ask for a secondment to the Ministry of Justice or the Ministry of Public Order to try and change a few small things from within.

As for the difference from my dream job growing up... I wanted to be Artoo Deetoo. You get my point

Honestly I can't remember. I've been looking at the forums for such a long time that I have memories of myself cursing the dial-up connection when trying to open a page on this site. It's just that I didn't register until this summer. When I decided that I was going to give writing fanfiction a try, I also decided that I should stop lurking and socialize a bit

 

Please choose:(a) an alien race in the GFFA; and then
(b) a style of architecture from a/some real-life culture/s (or time period, or both) that you think would be well-suited to that alien race.

 

When it comes to movie releases, and SW in particular, will you be in line opening weekend or wait for the DVD to come out? (Latter way is tops because then you get to know what others thought, if you don't mind spoilers.)

 

You said that you planed to use gree and talz. Have you come up with any personal cultural points regarding any of them? Fort examples regarding food, clothes, music, food, architecture, entertainment, food, etc. ​

 

Did that ophthalmologist correct your vision enough that you can see how Gamiel used "food" three times again in the previous question?

What three foods do you absolutely refuse to eat?

 

Why does the view of the open ocean all the way to the horizon spook you?