Sunshine Blogger Award

A big thank you to Megan of A Geeky Gal for nominating me for the Sunshine Blogger Award.

For the unfamiliar, these “awards” are an occasional community affair that give all of us writing for our own (and hopefully, your) entertainment the opportunity to  break free of our usual formats and give our readers and blogging comrades the opportunity to get to know us a bit better. Then we tag a few more people, and we can all find some great new sites to read. Everybody wins!

All right. Let’s see what’s going on with all this, then…

The Rules:

  • Thank the blogger who nominated you and link back to their blog.
  • Answer the 11 questions the blogger asked you.
  • Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions.
  • List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo in your post and/or on your blog.

Questions:

What song do you think makes people remember you? Hmm. Tough one. I’m not sure how much people in general would associate me with specific tunes, but I do know that my parents would almost certainly associate me with Franz Liszt’s Consolation No. 3 for piano, because I play it well. And it is a very nice piece, to be fair, so there are far worse things one could be associated with!

What character would you choose to be your best friend? Nepgear! I felt an incredible kinship with this character from the moment I first “met” her and she seemed distinctly anxious about her role as the protagonist. She’s a perfect blend of nerdy, responsible, neurotic and cute, and I love her to bits.

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What book do you need to read/game do you need to play/show do you need to watch still? So many! Book-wise, my friend Chris has suggested I might enjoy the Wheel of Time series and I think he’s probably right; game-wise, I have a backlog of obscene proportions, but I’d say some real “essentials” that I have no experience with whatsoever would be the Metroid series; shows that I need to watch include pretty much any anime broadcast since that season where Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid aired, the Castlevania show on Netflix and perhaps Battlestar Galactica if I can ever be bothered!

Have you smashed any personal goals recently? The anime How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? inspired me to get back to the gym for the first time in years. At the time of writing, I’ve been to the gym every weekday before work since I started watching the show the week before last.

If someone wanted to understand you, what should they read, watch and play? Read? Terry Pratchett. Watch? Friends, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Play? Hyperdimension Neptunia, Ar Tonelico, Senran Kagura, Dungeon Travelers 2, Katawa Shoujo and Ridge Racer Type-4You’ll probably be more confused by the time you’re finished. Which is fine, since I spend a lot of my time in my own head being confused.

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List your favourite fandoms and one character from each that you identify with. From Senran Kagura, Hikage is a character I identify with enormously thanks to her difficulty in expressing emotions to other people. I’m a deeply emotional person; I just have a bit of trouble showing it sometimes! From Neptunia, meanwhile, the aforementioned Nepgear is hard to beat, but I also like Noire, as she’s someone who takes pride in her hobbies and interests — but also sometimes isn’t quite sure how to broach the subject of enjoying them with others.

What are three things that you are enjoying right now? Like, literally right now? The cool breeze of this fan, this cold bottle of Cherry Pepsi Max and the satisfying ache of a productive day at the gym. Or if you were talking more generally, which you probably were, I’d say visual novel The Expression: Amrilato, the music of PASSPO and the aforementioned anime How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift?

What is your favourite YouTube channel? I’m not sure I have one specific one, so I’ll highlight the ones I come back to most frequently. (Besides mine, obviously!) I enjoy LGR for his soothing voice and interesting discussions of retro PC hardware. Game Grumps for their chaotic humour and the fact they give obscure, lesser-known games a chance and seem to legitimately enjoy them. Digitiser 2000 for absolute nonsense with a vague connection to video games. hellfire64 for knowledgeable, interesting looks at 8-bit microcomputer games. And Good Mythical Morning for daily entertainment I don’t have to think about too much.

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List three of your favourite songs right now. I’m addicted to Onegai Muscle, the opening theme to How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? — it’s the perfect accompaniment to strength training in the gym, particularly when played on a long loop. Aside from that, I have Girigiri Safe by Kyary PamyuPamyu stuck in my head… alongside David Braben Did a Poo from the recent Digitiser Live stage show.

What are some ways you practice self care that others might consider different or weird? I’m not sure if I do anything that unusual, despite not exactly following mainstream tastes in terms of entertainment. Probably the “weirdest” thing I do is confide in my cats. Meg in particular is an excellent listener, and it helps to express things that are difficult or impossible to say to another human being sometimes.

What is the hardest part about blogging? I’m fortunate in that I don’t tend to run into too many roadblocks, but coming up with effective ways to cover specific topics is always the biggest challenge for me — but also an area where I like to push myself. It’s why I started the Cover Game format in the first place — it forces me to consider all aspects of a game or visual novel and explore the entire experience in detail. Visual novels present the biggest challenge in that regard, I think, as you need to find a variety of specific narrative topics and subject matter to talk about rather than being able to neatly divide things along historical/gameplay/narrative lines.

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My Questions:

  • What’s your favourite piece of media (game, book, anime etc) that you think goes underappreciated, and why do you like it so much?
  • How long have you been creating things online, and how did you start?
  • Do you share your creative work with your “real life” friends and family? If so, how do they respond? If not, why not?
  • Social media: helpful or harmful? Why do you feel that way?
  • You’re presenting an important meeting, and you feel a horrific, probably unavoidable fart brewing. What do you do?
  • Have you done anything that has taken you out of your “comfort zone” recently? How did you handle it?
  • How have your tastes in media changed from how they were as a child and/or teen… if they’ve changed at all?
  • Surprise! You have a single “save game” slot, and you somehow managed to trigger it to save right before something from your life that you want to try again. What is the thing you want to try again, what would you do differently and how do you think that might change your current life, if at all?
  • What are some things you feel comfortable talking about now that you wouldn’t have been able to discuss when you were younger?
  • Someone online writes something that you think is irredeemably stupid, and you’re pretty sure you have the specialist knowledge required to dismantle their argument comprehensively and grind it into dust. What do you do? Be honest!
  • Regrettably, the fart escaped before you were able to leave the meeting room, regardless of your intentions. It was a right old noisy ripper and it stinks. How do you handle the situation?
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I Choose You!

That’s that then. More conventional Content™ coming later today. Please look forward to it!


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Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed this article. I’ve been writing about games in one form or another since the days of the old Atari computers, with work published in Page 6/New Atari User, PC Zone, the UK Official Nintendo Magazine, GamePro, IGN, USgamer, Glixel and more over the years, and I love what I do.

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13 thoughts on “Sunshine Blogger Award”

  1. Thanks for the tag! I’ll have to carefully consider those fart-related questions. These are the questions that reveal a person’s true character.

  2. Congratulations of course first for winning this award! Well deserved, but that will probably not come as a surprise! 😊 Thank you for nominating me and thinking up some great questions (that last one especially had me nearly spill my drink from laughing! 😂😂

  3. Thank you for the tag! Not sure when I’ll get around to it, but those questions will be really fun to answer!

    Also, I confide in my cats as well. They are su-purr supportive 🙂

  4. Thanks for the Tag. Those are some ripe questions to ponder over. I’m also loving the music from Dumbbell and if you want some good gym music check out the OP and ED from Hinomaru Sumo. The first of each and not the second. Real good grunty gym tunes.

  5. Thank you so much for the nomination! 😊… I will hopefully get around to writing a response… But I am also notoriously bad at doing these in a timely manner 🙄.

    1. No worries, I never expect anyone to feel obliged to do these, it’s just nice to give a few people I enjoy and respect a poke now and then 🙂

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