What's your favorite English classic, and also can you recommend a few?
if we're going by a stricter definition of "classic", i.e. the really old stuff, i'd say jerome k. jerome's
three men in a boat; coming into the 20th century, it has to be
1984 (orwell). i wouldn't be an english student if i didn't rep shakespeare - obviously you've got his big, well-known ones, but my personal favourite is
coriolanus, which isn't quite as famous. finally, i'll go all the way back to the oldest works & mention the
odyssey, which is a really important text & also a good read (my copy is rieu's translation but there are some recent translations that i've heard are quite good.)
some fairly mainstream picks, as it were, but i hope it's a satisfactory answer!
Did you hear about the scots wiki thing? I kinda feel bad for both the wiki and the guy no lie...
yea, i heard about that - pretty wild. seems like the guy thought he was acting in the right, but he's done quite a bit of damage to the perception/understanding of the language. the moral of the story's probably not to trust wikipedia, i guess.
Besides for english literature, what intellectual topic interests you the most?
i've phrased the op poorly but alongside english i'm also doing classics - the study of ancient greece & rome. (that's the poshboy instinct of "everyone knows what i'm talking about here" kicking in again...). ancient history & literature are really really cool (from an academic pov - not so much in terms of what's going to make you friends at parties). you can make a lot of comparisons to the modern era, which is always interesting, but possibly even cooler is looking at the way these ancient cultures interacted; e.g. there's evidence now suggesting that the greeks started colonising the mediterranean about 2 centuries earlier than previously thought, which implies that their language & maybe even their city-state culture could've been adapted from that of the phoenicians. that (long, sorry) point also kind of ties into another thing i love about it - the field's still developing, even though it's concerned with events from so long ago.
outside of that, i took philosophy for a couple of years in high school, which was excellent - we did all the stereotypical stuff about whether or not the world really exists (tl;dr: probably?), which was really interesting, but we also looked at ethics, especially medical ethics. i found it p humbling, in a way - i went in with a fairly preconceived notion of my opinions on things like abortion/organ sales/etc., but i had them challenged in a p refereshing way.
Tell us a really cool thing about English lit that you feel warrants sharing
the first thing that comes to mind is that basically nobody can agree on what literature actually
is. for example, there are these old russian guys called the formalists who'd say it's defined by the presence of structure within language, which gives the text meaning, but that doesn't really take into account any sort of wider historical/personal context. then you've got what's called leavisite criticism, which is basically the idea that mass culture doesn't enrich the consumer, while literature needs close, academic reading to be consumed & enriches the reader - a v elitist idea, of course. these are only 2 examples of theories - there are so many, none of which are perfect. the best we can come up with for a working definition of literature is that it's an interplay between the language used in the text, the author, the reader & the wider world - all of which impact the text in some way, but are also impacted by it. it's a super cool debate that i've not really done justice here bc there are so many different ways to look at it/tangents to go off on.
As the hero of Firebot and father of Smogoff, do you have a ballad about your feats played on the bagpipes?
sadly not. perhaps now that i'm famous enough for a well, someone will write one?
I've noticed that my posts are often liked by you in bulk. What is your technique when it comes to liking posts? Any prerequisites a post needs to meet to deserve a like?
i don't really have a specific technique - tends to just be on my regular scrolls through smogoff/my notifications. sometimes i'll read through a new thread and only realise once i've got to the end that i've been necroliking, but generally if you're getting a lot of likes it's probably just bc i've come across a lot of your posts.
there's no real secret to getting a like from me - if i enjoy a post, or it contributes to the discussion or whatever, i'll drop a like. i don't want to say my standards are lower than other people's bc that sounds like i'm slating the posts i like - i think maybe it's just that everyone else is a lot more controlled/conservative with their likes & maybe they only hit the button when a post is really good - possibly the kind of post i'd drop a love react on. i can't speak for anyone else on that, though.
the whole likes thing was never meant to be a gimmick, incidentally - it just kinda happened /shrug
How long have you been contributing to Firebot and Smogoff for?
technically i contributed to firebot from about 2014, when i joined, but my posts were fairly sparse (& most of them depended on the literal one joke of women/people in general not liking me). i reached critical posting mass in early 2016, as seen in the greatest hits thread linked in the op - i think that thread chastised me a bit & i slowed down & lurked moar.
i've been involved with smogoff since before it even began.
What is your favorite mon?
typhlosion - generic "first pokemon i ever used uwu" answer, i'm afraid. second place is herdier.
What is your least favorite mon?
cradily. the design freaked me out when i was younger & i'm still not a fan. it's one of the very few mons i actively dislike.
How often do you like my posts?
whenever they're good enough, i guess. i don't have stats relative to other users or anything, but if i like a post (as it were) & it's not from months ago, i'll probably hit the like button
I don’t mean to expose you but
View attachment 281747
how much money do you make sir?
currently absolutely none... in fact, i'm technically in debt to myself (negative money! wow!) bc there's inheritance money in my bank account that should've gone into a savings account, but i've been dipping into it to pay for shit.
... i really need a job.
Thoughts on the current like economy?
i've never been the best at economics, but i imagine i've flooded the market somewhat. or maybe it's more like i'm investing in stocks? idk someone who understands these things please explain.
in an effort to not make all questions regarding Smogon Likes (tm)
what do you like to do in your spare time?
i'm an avid rower (americans may know the sport as "crew"), which takes up a fairly significant chunk of my time - atm i'm theoretically on ~10 sessions a week, but covid's obviously causing issues with that. i'm working my way through a knee injury - went to the physio back in like jan/feb & was told i didn't need to reduce my training load - just tape it up & rub some gel on it every night - but it's still giving me grief all these months later, so there's clearly something funky going on down there.
i also play alto saxophone - i was second alto in my high school jazz band, but i haven't auditioned for the uni band, partially bc my schedule's a nightmare this year & partially bc the auditions were online & that freaked me out fsr.
i volunteer with a local youth group once a week - this, too, has been forced online by the pandemic, but it's looking positive for in-person meetings again soon. fingers crossed!
any favorite media that you've been hooked on lately?
i binged series 1 of
the boys on amazon prime in time for series 2 launching; got about halfway through series 2 before uni kicked in & i now have no time to finish it :(. really enjoying it, though - a solid deconstruction of the superhero genre/ideal, vastly superior to the comic version (which i still liked) & generally just great fun. would 100% recommend.
what made you want to pick that username?
i actually don't know where it came from - it feels a bit ~~ lol teh randomz ~~ tbh. i think i vaguely remember mentioning it during a conversation with a primary school friend about names for a youtube channel or something? could be making that up tho.
i've considered a name change a few times over the years, but i've never been able to come up with anything good & this seems to be what i'm known by now, so i guess it's here to stay.
you are hosting a smogon dinner party, which 5 guests from smogon do you invite and why
tricky one. narrowing it down to just 5 is really hard. we'll say provisional lineup of mace, plague von karma, monkfish & phoopes (bc they seem like they're sound/have good chat) + wildcard no one beats the bug (bc i bet he'd be fun irl). won't do runners-up/honourable mentions bc there are too many.
this question's going to keep me up at night now tbh
why is your avatar of bisharp not clefairy?
avatar was
made by yung dramps bc bisharp is cool, bisexuality is cool, the "bi-sharp" pun was cool & the resultant sprite was exceedingly cool. it's not clefairy bc i feel like that might be a bit on-the-nose & also clefairy's just not that cool i'm afraid.
Why Clefairy? Do you need a Total Moon Stone to evolve into Total Clefable? Total Clefairy vs DMax Clefairy, who wins?
as above, i'm not 100% sure where the name came from, but i have a sneaking suspicion it was my 12-year-old "random=funny" instinct kicking in.
i googled "total moon stone" & i got an ad for healing crystals so i'll prob pass on that one.
i like to think i could handle a middle-stage mon, even dmaxed. not to flex or anything but uhhhh i'm a pretty big guy myself. to be on the safe side, i'd bring a steel wool brush or something.
depends on the ghost tbh. is the ghost hot? does the ghost consent? was the ghost over the legal age at time of death? (bc that's a slightly thorny moral issue tbh). if so, i guess there's nothing holding me back other than the obvious physical limitations!
On the other side of this, what grounds do you need to NOT like a post?
i guess it's just kind of the opposite to my liking philosophy - if it doesn't deserve a like it doesn't get one. not liking posts is thankfully still my default reaction, although it certainly seems otherwise sometimes.
the one post i specifically remember going "i will NOT like this post EVER" was
this one, but that was more for the joke than anything else.
favorite folk song with bagpipes? in my limited knowledge, I like highland cathedral
highland cathedral's probably my favourite too, but a few others that i enjoy are
the dark isle, amazing grace, & the impressively stereotypically-named
highland laddie. bagpipe music gets shat on a lot, even here, but i actually really like it.
there's also a really cool drum-centric tune for a full pipe band that i've heard a few times but i have no idea what it's called & i've never been able to find it online.
how do you like your steak
i actually stopped eating beef/steak about a year ago bc of how detrimental farming it is to the environment compared to other meats, but i was a medium-rare guy, starting to venture towards rare if i was feeling adventurous.
